Vindication of the English Constitution in a Letter to a Noble and Learned Lord

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VINDICATION

OF THB

ENGLISH CONSTITUTION,

&c.

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VINDICATION

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ENGLISH CONSTITUTION

IN A

LETTER

TO A

NOBLE AND LEARNED LORD.

' DISRAELI THE YOUNGER.

LONDON
SAUNDERS AND OTLEY, CONDUIT STREET.

1835.

LONDON :

IKOT80N AND PALMFR, PRINTERS, SAVOY 8TRBET» STRAND.

I

5

^

en

SYNOPSIS

OF THB

FOLLOWING TREATLSE.

Of Writers on the English Constitution . . Page 2

Of the Utilitarian System ; its* fallacies . . . 3 — 13
Of abstract principles in Politics, and of the degree of
Theory that enters into Politics . . 14 — 16

Of Magna Charta . . . . . . 17—20

Petition of Right 21

Of Precedent, Prescription, and Antiquity . . 22 — 25 ,
Of the formation of a free Constitution • . .26

Of the attempts of the French to form a free Constitution :
Reasons of their failure : Fallacy of adopting the English
Constitution in France . . . 27 — 35

Of the attempts to establish the English Constitution in
the Sicilies and the Peninsula .... 35 — 37
Of the last attempt of the French to form a free Govern-
ment : La Fayette and Lord Somers compared 38 — 45
Of the Constitutional developement of Prussia . 46 — 66
Constitution of the United States exercises the same fatal
influence over America as that of England over Europe ;
Mexico, Chili, Peru, contrasted with France, Spain, and

i| Portugal 56 — 69

VI

Of the " Wisdom of our Ancestors ** . . 60 — 64
The " House of Commons " not the " House of the Peo-
ple" . " 65—67

The Political Institutions of England, sprung from its legal

Institutions 68

Nature of the Representative principle . . 69

Original character of the English Parliament . 70

Of the Estate of the Knights . . . 71 75

Rise of the Towns . . . . . 76 80

Creation of the Estate of the Commons . . 81

The House of Commons an Equestrian Chamber 81 — 84
Why the Equality of Civil Rights was established in England
at so early a period of our History . . 85 — 87

Why Liberty flourished under the Plantagenets . 88

Why Liberty declined under the Tudors . . 90

Primary effect of Protestantism in England not favourable
to our Civil Liberties .... 92

Of the Constitution of the House of Commons under the
Tudors, and of the system of Borough Represent-
ation ...... 93—102

Anecdote of the Pacha of Egypt : Representation without
Election illustrated ... . 102 — 106

Why the Political Consequences of the Protestant Religion
on the Continent were different to those in England, and
why favourable to Civil Liberty : Protestantism creates a
Republican Religion . • . . 107

Introduction of the phrase " The People " into European
Politics ..... 108

Attempts of the English Aristocracy to restore the Con-
stitution of the Plantagenets under Charles the First 111
Constitutional Reformers, and Root and Branch Reformers :
the Root and Branch Reformers attack the Church, and
alarm the Constitutional Reformers . . .114
The Root and Branch Reformers deserted by the Con-

Vll

Btitutional Reformers foriti an anti-ni^tional alliance with
the Scotch Covenanters . . .115

Parallel between passing events and the reign of Charles the
First . 116—117

Government of << the People " established in England. Its
Practical consequences. The Nation seeks refuge from
"THE People'* 118—121

Public Opinion not less influential in the age of Charles the
First than at the present day : European Movement de-
scribed 122—124

Of the latter Stuarts . . . . . 125

Blunders of the Whigs in their Reform of the House
Commons; but the original character of the House
Commons still retained : not the House of the People

127—129

Of the constitution of the House of Lords . 130 — 134

Of the Spiritual Lords : the Bench of Bishops a democratic
Institution ..... 133—138

Of the Temporal Lords .... 139

Of the Peerage Bill : Attempts of the Whigs to establish an
Oligarchy • . . . . . 140

Irresponsibility of the House of Lords considered : the Lords
not more irresponsible than the Commons . 141 — 146

The Qualification of the Peers the same as the Commons,
hereditary: Hereditary Legislators not more absurd
than Hereditary Electors : The principle of Hereditary
Legislation not constitutionally anomalous • 147 — 148

The principle of Hereditary Legislation not abstractedly
absurd ..... 149—153

Political Institutions must be judged by their results: The
Hereditary Peerage contributes to the stability of the
State : the House of Lords in ability always equal to
the House of Commons: superior since the Reform

153—155

I

V

Vlll

The principle of Hereditary Legislatio*!! prevalent in the
House of Commons, and sanctioned by the national cha-
racter ..... 156

The Hereditary principle must not be considered abstract-
edly: The French Senate examined: Why an Here-
ditary Senate, composed of the ablest men, may be a po'
litical non-entity : Necessary qualities of an assembly
like the English House of Lords . . 157 — 162

Causes of the Harmony between the two Houses . 163

The Hereditary principle must also be considered in refer-
ence to the system of parties in this country . 164

Summary: that the principle of Hereditary Legislation is
neither constitutionally anomalous, nor abstractedly ab-
surd, nor practically injurious, but the reverse . 165

Of the Kingly Office, . . . 166—167

J Unsuccessful attempts of the Whigs to establish an Oli-
garchy under William the Third

Reign of Anne ; its influence on parties . .169

More successful attempts of the Whigs to establish an
Oligarchy under George the First. They establish the

. Cabinet and banish the King from his own Council ; . pass
the Septennial Act, and introduce the Peerage Bill. Oli-
garchical coups d'etat . . ^■ ^^70

Policy of the Whigs under George the First, compared with
their Policy at the present day . ._ 172

George the Second unsuccessfully struggles against the
Whig Oligarchs . . . 173

George the Third emancipates the nation from them

y 17^

Of Whigs and Tories : their origin explained, and theirreB""
character ascertained . . . 174 "^

Why the advocacy of divine right, non-resistance and pas-
sive obedience by the Tories in the reign of George
the First, were evidences of the Democratic character of
the party . . . - 177

IX

The Whigs an Oligarchical faction. The Tories a national
party . . . . .178

Why the Whigs are, ever have been, and ever must be, odi-
ous to the English nation . . .181

Why the Whigs are hostile to the establishments of the

country . • . . . 181

^.BcQbahlg^cQnaaaiii^nrpft pf ^ yhjggisnu an j degrading effects of

Page 115, first line, read and Root and Branch.
160, last hue, for the read their.

Three points to which the Tories must at the present mo-
ment apply themselves . . . 192

Tories vindicated from the charges of Corruption, Bigotry,
and Hostility to Improvement . . 193 — 197

Causes and consequences of Political Conciliation . 198

Vindication of the recent policy of Sir Robert Peel and his
Cabinet ... . . 199—201

The political power of the Tories distinguished from their
social power : the political power maintained at present
by a series of great Democratic measures . 202 — ^203

General view of the English Constitution : shown to be a
complete Democracy . • . 204

English and French Equality contrasted . 205 — 207

Conclusion .... 208—210

B

LETTER, &c.

Your Lordship has honoured me by a wish that
some observations which I have made in conver-
sation on the character of our constitution might
be expressed in a more formal and more public
m^iner. When I transmit you this long letter,
I fear you may repent your friendly suggestion ;
but the subject has given rise to so many re-
flections, that I did not anticipate, that what I
originally intended for a pamphlet has^ I fear,
expanded almost into a volume.

The polity of England, which has established
the most flouriahing society of modern ages, and

B 2

regulated the destinies of a nation which, for
many centuries, has made a progressive advance
in the acquisition of freedom, wealth, and glory,
undoubtedly presents one of the most interesting
subjects of speculation in political philosophy.
Nor is it one that has been neglected ; and illus-
trious foreigners have emulated- our native
authors in their treatises of the English Consti-
tution. Our own constitutional writers may, in
general, be divided into two classes : firstly, the
mere antiquaries whose labours however are in-
estimable ; and, secondly, that order of political
writers who have endeavoured, in an examination
of what they style the theory of the Constitution,
to promulgate the opinions and maintain the in-
terests of the party in the state in whose ranks
they have been enrolled : the dissertations upon
our constitution have therefore been either ar-
chaiological treatises or party manifestoes.

Yet for many years the general result of these
writings, whichever might be the quarter whence
they emanated was, as far as their subject was
concerned, one of unqualified panegyric. How-
ever the excesses of factions might be deplored.

or the misrepresentations of factious writers ex-
posed and stigmatized, the English constitution
was universally recognised as an august and ad-
mirable fabric, and counted among the choicest
inventions of public intellect on record. That
a very di£ferent tone has of late years been m^
sumed by our public writers is a notorious cir-
cumstance. A political sect has sprung up
avowedly adverse to the Estates of the realm,
and seeking by means which, of course, it holds
legal, the abrogation of a majority of them.
These anti-constitutional writers, like all new
votaries, are remarkable for their zeal and their
activity. They omit no means of disseminating
their creed : they are very active missionaries :
there is no medium of the public press of which
they do not avail themselves: they have their
newspapers, daily and weekly, their magazines,
and their reviews. The unstamped press takes
the cue from them, and the members of the
party who are in Parliament lose no opportunity
of dilating on the congenial theme at the public
meetings of their constituents.

The avowed object of this new sect of states-

men is to submit the institutions of the country
to the test of utility, and to form a new con-
stitution on the abstract principles of theoretic

science. / 1 think it is Voltaire who tells us, that
/ /

there is nothing more common than to read and

to converse to no purpose, and that in history,
in morals^ and in divinity we should beware of
EQUIVOCAL TERMS. I do uot think that politics
should form an exception to this salutary rule ;
and, for my own part, it appears to me that this
term, utility, is about as equivocal as any one
which, from the time of the Nominalists and
Realists, to our present equally controversial and
equally indefinite days, hath been let loose to
breed sects and set men a-brawling. The fitness
of a material object for a material purpose is a
test of its utility which our senses and necessities
can decide ; but what other test there is of moral
and political utility than the various and varying
opinions of mankind, I am at a loss to discover ;
and that this is utterly unsatisfactory and insuffi-
cient, all, I apprehend, must agree.

Indeed, I have hitherto searched in vain in
the writings of the Utilitarian sect for any defi-

nition of their fundamental phrase with which it
is possible to grapple. That they pretend to
afford us a definition it would be disingenuous to
conceal^ and we are informed that Utility is ^Hhe
prinoiple which produces the greatest happiness
of the greatest number/' Does this advance us
in comprehension ? Who is to decide upon the
greatest happiness of the greatest number ? Ac-
cording to Prince Metternich, the government
of Austria secures the greatest happiness of the
greatest number : it is highly probable that the
effect of the Austrian education and institutions
may occasion the majority of the Austrian popu-
lation to be of the same opinion. Yet the
government of Austria is no £Eivourite with the
anti-constitutional writers of our own country.
Gross superstition may secure the greatest hap-
piness of the greatest number, as it has done in
Spain and Portugal : a military empire may se-
cure the greatest happiness of the greatest num-
ber, as it has done in Rome and France : a
coarse and unmitigated despotism may secure
the greatest happiness of the greatest niimbei^, as
it doe^ to this day in many regions of Asia and

8

Africa. Every governinent that ever existed),
that has enjoyed any quality of duration, must
have been founded on this *^ greatest happiness,
principle/' for had not the majority thought or
felt that such were its result, the government
could never have endured. There have been
times, and those too not far gone, when the
greatest happiness of Christian nations has been
secured by burning men alive for their religious
faith ; and unless we are prepared to proclaim
that all religious creeds, which di£fer from our
own, are in fact not credited by their pretended
votaries, we must admit that the greatest hap-
piness of the greatest number of mankind is even
now secured, by believing that which we know
to be false* If the greatest happiness of the
greatest number, therefore, be the only test of
the excellence of political institutions, that may
be the plea for institutions which, according
to the Utilitarians especially, are monstrous or
absurd : and if to avoid this conclusion we main-
tain that the greatest number are not the proper
judges of the greatest happiness, we are only re^
ferred to the isolated opinions of solitary philo-

9

sophers, or at the best to the conceited convic-
tion of some sectarian minority. Utility, in
short, is a mere phrase, to which any man may
ascribe any meaning that his interests prompt, or
his passions dictate. With this plea, a nation
may consider it in the highest degree useful, that
all the statues scattered throughout the museums
of Christendom should be collected in the same
capital, and conquer Christendom in consequence
to obtain their object ; and by virtue of the same
plea, some Iconoclastic enemy may declare war
upon this nation of Dilettanti to-morrow, and
dash into fragments their cosmopolite collection.
Viewed merely in relation to the science of
government, the eflfect of the test of utility, as
we have considered it, would in all probability
be harmless, and its practical tendency, if any,
would rather lead to a spirit of conservation
and optimism than to one of discontent and
change. But optimism is assuredly not the sys-
tem of the Utilitarians : far from thinking every
thing is for the best, they decidedly are of opi-
nion that every thing is for the worst. . In order,
therefore, that their test of utility should lead to

10

the political results which they desire, they have
dove-tailed their peculiar system of government
into a peculiar system of morals, in connexion
with which we must alone subject it to our con-
sideration. The same inventive sages, who have
founded all political science on Utility, have
founded all moral science on Self Interest,
and have then declared that a system of govern-
ment should be deduced alone from the princi-
ples of human nature. If mankind could agree
on a definition of Self-interest, I willingly admit
that they would not be long in deciding upon a
definition of Utility. But what do the Utilita^
rians mean by the term, Self-interest ? I at
once agree that man acts from no other prin-
ciple than self-interest, but I include in self-
interest, and I should think every accurate
reasoner must do the same, every motive
that can possibly influence man. If every mo-
tive, that can possibly influence man, be in-
eluded in self-interest, then it is impossible to
form a science on a principle, which includes the
most contrary motives. If the Utilitarians will
not admit all the motives, but only some of the

11

motives, then their science of government is not
founded on human nature, but only on a part of
human nature, and must be consequently and
proportionately imperfect. But the Utilitarian
only admits one or two of the motives that in-
fluence man ; a desire of power and a desire of
property; and therefore infers that it is the
interest of man to tyrannize, and to rob. The
blended Utilitarian system of morals and politics
then runs thus : — man is only influenced by self-
interest : it is the interest of man to be a tyrant
and a robber : a man does not change bis
nature because he is a king ,* therefore a king is
a tyrant and a robber. If it be the interest of
one man to be a tyrant and a robber, it is the
interest of fifty or five thousand to be tyrants
and robbers ; therefore we cannot trust an
aristocracy more than a monarch. But the
eternal principle of human nature must always
hold good. A privileged class is always an
aristocracy, whether it consists of five thousand
or fifty thousand, a band of nobles or a favoured
sect ; therefore the power of government should
be entrusted to all ; therefore the only true and

12

useful government is a representative polity,
founded on universal suffrage* This is the Utili-
tarian system of morals and government, drawn
from their " great works,*' by one who has no
wish to misrepresent them. Granting for a mo-
ment their premises, I do not see that their de-
duction, even then, is logically correct It is
possible to conceive a state of society where the
government may be in the hands of a favoured
majority ; a community of five millions, of which
three might form a privileged class. Would not
the greatest happiness of the greatest number be
secured by such an arrangement ? and, if so
secured, would, or would not the Utilitarian,
according to his theory, feel justified in disturb-
ing it ? If he oppose such a combination, he over-
throws his theory ; if he consents to such a
combination, his theory may uphold tyranny and
spoliation. But I will not press this point : it is
enough for me to show, that to render their po-
litics practical they are obliged to make their
metaphysics impossible* Let the Utilitarian
prove that the self-interest of man always leads
him to be a tyrant and a robber, and I will grant

13

that universal suffrage is a necessary and useful
institution. A nation that conquers the worlds
acts from self-interest ; a nation that submits to
a conqueror acts from self-interest. A spend-
thrift and a miser alike act from self-interest : the
same principle animated Messalina and Lucretia^
Bayard and Byng. To say that when a man
acts, he acts from self-interest, is only to an-
nounce, that when a man does act, he acts. An
important truth, a great discovery, calling as-
suredly for the appearance of prophets, or if
necessary, even ghosts. But to announce, that
when a man acts, he acts from self-interest, and
that the self-interest of every man prompts him
to be a tyrant and a robber, is to declare that
which the experience of all human nature con-
tradicts, because we all daily and hourly feel and
see, that there are a thousand other motives
which influence human conduct besides the idea
of exercising power, and obtaining property ;
every one of which motives must rank under the
term self-interest, because every man who acts
under their influence must necessarily believe
that in so acting, he acts for his happiness, and

14

therefore for his self-interest. Utility, Pain,
Power, Pleasure, Happiness, Self-interest, are all
phrases to which any man may annex any mean-
ing he pleases, and from which any acute and
practised reasoner may most syllogistically de-
duce any theory he chooses. " Such words,"
says Locke, " no more improve our understand-
ing, than the move of a jack will fill our bellies.*'
This waste of ingenuity on nonsense is like the
condescending union that occasionally occurs be-
tween some highbred steed and some long-eared
beauty of the Pampas : the base and fantastical
embrace only produces a barren and mulish
progeny. /

We have before this had an a-priori system of
celestial mechanics, and its votaries most syllo-
gistically sent Galileo to a dungeon, after having
triumphantly refuted him. We have before this
had an a-priori system of metaphysics, but where
now are the golden volumes of Erigena, and
Occam, and Scotus, and Raymond Lully?
And now we have an a-priori system of politics.
Imen are revived in the nineteenth
id are going to settle the state with

15

their withering definitions, their fruitless logo-
machies, and barren dialectics.

I should suppose that there is no one of the
Utilitarian sages who would not feel o£fended if
I were to style him the Angelical Doctor, like
Thomas Acquinas ; and I regret, from bitter ex*
perience, that they have not yet condescended
sufficiently to cultivate the art of composition to
entitle them to the style of the Perspicuous
Doctor, like Walter Burley.

^ These reflections naturally lead me to a con- ^
sideration of the great object of our new school
of statesmen in general, which is to form politi-
cal institutions on abstract principles of theoretic
science, instead of permitting them to spring ^
from the course of events, and to be naturally
created by the necessities of nations. It would
app^ir that this scheme originated in the fallacy
of supposing that theories produce circumstances,
whereas the very converse of the proposition is
correct, and circumstances indeed produce theo-
ries. If we survey the career of an individual,
we shall on the whole observe a remarkable con-
sistency in his conduct; yet it is isui^iS than pos-

16

8ible, that this individual has never acted from
that organized philosophy which we style system.
What, then, has produced this consistency?
what, then, has occasioned this harmony of pur-
pose ? His individual character. * Nations have
characters, as well as individuals, and national
character is precisely the quality which the new
sect of statesmen, in their schemes and specula**
tions, either deny or overlook. The ruling pas-
sion, which is the result of organization, regulates
the career of an individual, subject to those su-
perior accidents of fortune, whose secondary
influence is scarcely inferior to the impulse of
his nature. The blended influences of nature
and fortune form his character ;- — 'tis the same
with nations. There are important events in
the career of an individual which force the
man to poiider over the past, and in these
studies of experience and struggles for self-
knowledge, to ascertain certain principles of con-
duct, which he recognises as the cause of past
success, and anticipates as the guarantee of
future prosperity : and there are great crises in
the fortunes of an ancient people, which impel

17

them to examine the nature of the institutions
which have gradually sprung up among them.
In this great national review, duly and wisely
separating the essential character of their history
from that which is purely adventitious, they dis-
cover certain principles of ancestral conduct,
which they acknowledge as the causes that these
institutions have flourished and descended to them;
and in their future career, and all changes, reforms,
and alterations, that they may deem expedient, they
resolve that these principles shall be their guides
and their instructors. By these examinations
they become more deeply intimate with their
national character ; and on this increased know-
ledge, and on this alone, they hold it wise to act.
This, my. Lord, I apprehend to be the greatest
amount of theory that ever enters into those poli-
tical institutions, which, from their perma-
nency, are alone entitled to the consideration
of a philosophical statesman ; and this mode-
rate, prudent, sagacious, and eminently prac-
tical, application of principles to conduct has
ever been, in the old time, the illustrious charac-
teristic of our English politicians, y From the

c

18

days of Magna Charta to those of the Declara-
tion of Right, the same wary boldness is percep-
tible in the conduct of our leaders. It is the
fashion' now-a-days to depreciate the value of
the great charter ; an ominous sign of the times
in my belief. For he runs a slight chance of
being ultimately counted among the false pro-
phets of the realm, who predicts, that when the
mention of that blessed deed does not command
the reverential gratitude of every Briton, evil
fortunes are impending for this society. Despots
may depreciate it, whether they assume the
forms of crowned monarchs or popular tribunes,
for it stands alike in their way ; but he who
really loves freedom and his fatherland, will
never forget that the signet of the tyrant, sealed
alike our civil liberty and our national indepen-
dence. They were great men, my Lord, that
Archbishop of Canterbury, and that Earl of
Pembroke, who, in the darkness of feodal ages,
laid this bold and broad foundation of our na-
tional liberties ; they were great men, and they
were great statesmen. They did not act upon
abstract principles, luckily for us, principles

19

which the next age might have rejected, and
the first schoolman, hired by the King, might
have refuted ; they acted upon positive conven-
tional right. They set up no new title : they
claimed their inheritance. They established the
liberties of Englishmen as a life estate, which
their descendants might enjoy, but could not
abuse by committing waste, or forfeit, by any
false and fraudulent conveyance. They entailed
our freedom. The Magna Charta, at which our
new sect of statesmen, the admirers of abstrac-
tions, sneer, (it would be well if they read it
oftener, or at all,) established an equality of civil
rights to all classes of English freemen. It ter-
minated arbitrary imprisonment, and arbitrary
spoliation. It enacted that justice should neither
be sold, nor denied, nor delayed. It virtually
established Habeas Corpus. It eminently ad-
vanced civilisation by curtailing at the same time
the most crying grievances of the feodal tenure,
and rendering inviolate the franchises of all
mural communities. It checked the forest laws,
established the freedom of foreign commerce,
and finally secured the speedy execution of jus-

c 2

20

tice, by virtually rendering the Court of Com-
mon Pleas permanent at Westminster, and in-
dependent of the sovereign.

But, my Lord, these great and manifold bless-
ings were not wrested from the Norman op-
pressor by the Barons of England, under the
plea of Utility, or with some windy and senseless
cry of securing the greatest happiness of the
greatest number. Stephen Langton knew the
value of words as well as any clerk in Christen-
dom ; and he knew also, that the right that is
founded on words, may be subverted by the same
machinery; that what is incontestable in the
twelfth century may be a subject of great dis-
cussion in the thirteenth ; that a first principle
m one age may become a second principle in a
succeeding century, or a twenty-second prin-
ciple. Whether there were any Utilitarians
under the Plantagenets, I pretend not to decide.
There is generally no lack of political sciolists^
and, for aught I know, some predecessor of Con-
dorcet or Bentham may have been innocently
dreaming in a cloister; but if these abstract-
principle gentlemen had been as active in the

21

reign of John, as in that of our own gracious
Sovereign, I doubt our great Lord Primate
would have placed the state in jeopardy to make
it prove and square with their cockbrained fan-
cies. The Barons wished that the liberties they
secured for themselves should likewise descend
to their posterity ; and as therefore they were
to become a matter of inheritance, as a matter of
inheritance they claimed them. They claimed
them as an inheritance which had been too long
in abeyance; and not content with establishing
their confirmation by Henry Beauclerk, they
traced their glorious pedigree even to the Con-
fessor.

I do not find, my Lord, that at a much late «
but as momentous a, period of our history,
Selden and Sir Edward Coke, though they lived
in an age which, in the Protestant Reformation
and the Revolt of the Netherlands, had wit-
nessed revolutions as awful as any of those
which we, or our fathers, can remember ; and
had, consequently, the advantage of a far vaster
range of political experience than the Stephen
Langtons and the great patriots of the reign of

John ; I do not find, my Lord, that these wise,
and spirited, and learned personages, saw fit to
question the propriety of their great ancestors'
conduct. On the contrary, knowing that society
is neither more nor less than a compact, and that
no right can be long relied on that cannot boast
a conventional origin, they were most jealous of
our title to our liberties. They lavished all
their learning in proving its perfection and com-
pleteness. They never condescended to argue ;
they offered evidence. They were ever ready
with their abstract of title, and with very slight
alterations, the language of the famous Petition
of Right itself might be transformed into a
humble request to a sovereign for the reslioration
of some real estate ; some patrimony long with-
3 held from a defrauded posterity./ In short, all
our struggles for freedom smack of law. There
is, throughout the whole current of our history,
a most salutary legal flavour. And arbitrary
monarchs and rebellious parliaments alike cloak
their encroachments under the sacred veil of
right, alike quote precedent and cling to pre-
scription.

23

This respect for Precedent, this clinging to
Prescription, this reverence for Antiquity, which
are so often ridiculed by conceited and super-
ficial minds, and move the especial contempt of
the gentlemen who admire abstract principles,
appear to me to have their origin in Or profound
knowledge of human nature, and in a fine
observation of public affairs, and satisfactorily to
account for the permanent character of our li-
berties. Those great men, who have periodically
risen to guide the helm of our government in
times of tumultuous and stormy exigency, knew
that a State is a complicated creation of refined
art, and they handled it with all the delicacy a
piece of exquisite machinery requires. They
knew that if once they admitted the abstract
rights of subjects, they must inevitably advance
to the abstract rights of men, and then that the
very foundations of their civil polity would sink
beneath them. They held this to be too dear a
price for the barren fruition of a first principle.
They knew that the foundation of civil polity is
Convention, and that every thing and every per-
son that springs from that foundation, must par-

24

take of that primary character. They held
themselves bound by the contracts of their forpj
fathers, because they wished their posterity to
observe their own agreements. They did not
comprehend how the perpetuity of a State could
be otherwise preserved. They looked upon the
nation as a family, and upon the country as a
landed inheritance. Generation after genera-
tion were to succeed to it, with all its conve-
nient buildings, and all its choice cultivation, its
parks and gardens, as well as its fields and
meads, its libraries and its collections of art, all
its wealth, but all its incumbrances. Holding
society to be as much an artificial creation as
the fields and cities amid which they dwelt, they
were of opinion that every subject was bound to
respect the established constitution of his coun*
try, because, independent of all other advan-
tages, to that constitution he was indebted even
for his life. Had not the State been created, the
subject would not have existed. Man with
them, therefore, was the child of the State, and
born with filial duties. To disobey the State,
therefore, was a crime ; to rebel against it.

25

treason ; to overturn it, parricide. Our ances-
tors could not comprehend how this high spirit
of loyalty could be more efficiently fostered and
maintained, than by providing that the rights,
privileges, and possessions, of all should rest on
no better foundation than the State itself. They
would permit no antagonist principle in their
body politic. They would not tolerate nature
struggling with art, or theory with habit.
Hence their reverence for prescription, which
they placed above law, and held superior to
reason. It is to this deference to what Lord
Coke finely styles, " reverend antiquity," that I
ascribe the duration of our commonwealth, and
it is this spirit which has prevented even our
revolutions from being destructive. !

I do not see, my Lord, that this reverence
for antiquity has checked the progress of know-
ledge, or stunted the growth of liberty, in this
island. We are universally held to be the freest
people in Europe, and to have enjoyed our de-
gree of freedom for a longer period than any
existing state. I am not aware that any nation
can fairly assert its claims to superior learning

26

or superior wisdom ; to a more renowned skill
in arts or arms ; to a profounder scientific spirit ;
to a more refined or comprehensive civilisation.
I know that a year or two back the newspapers
that are in the interest of the new sect of states-
men, were wont to twit and taunt us with the
superior freedom of our neighbours. ^ The
&ct can no longer be concealed/' announced
the prime organ of the party, " the people of
France are freer than the people of England.
The consciousness of this fact will be the last
blow to the oligarchy." Profound publicist!
The formation of a free government on an ex-
tensive scale, while it is assuredly one of the
most interesting problems of humanity, is cer-
tainly the greatest achievement of human wit.
Perhaps I should rather term it a superhuman
achievement ; for it requires such refined pru-
dence, such comprehensive knowledge, and such
perspicacious sagacity, united with such almost
illimitable powers of combination, that it is
nearly in vain to hope for qualities so rare to be
congregated in a solitary mind. Assuredly this
sufnmum bonum is not to be found ensconced

27

behind a revolutionary barricadei or floating in
the bloody gutters of an incendiary metropolis.
It cannot be scribbled down— this great inven-
tion — in a morning on the envelope of a letter
by some charter-concocting monarch, or sketched
with ludicrous facility in the conceited common-
place book of an Utilitarian sage. With us it
has been the growth of ages, and brooding cen-
turies have watched over and tended its perilous
birth and feeble infancy. The noble offspring of
liberty and law now flourishes in the full and
lusty vigour of its proud and perfect manhood.
Long may it flourish ! Long be its life, vene-
rable its age, and distant its beatified eutha-
nasia I I offer this prayer for the sake of human
nature, as much as for my country ; not more
for Britain, than for the world, of which it is
the ornament and honour.

When the people of France, at the latter part of
the last century, made their memorable effort for
the formation of a free government, they acted
on very different principles to those that guided
Stephen Langton and Selden. Their principles,
indeed, were as abstract as any Utilitarian could

28

desire. They built their fabric, not merely upon
the abstract rights of subjects, but the abstract
rights of men, and at once boldly seized equality
for their basis. We know the result. Equality,
anarchy, tyranny, were the necessary gradations
of their philosophical system of political rege- ^

neration. Wearied with fruitless eflforts, and
exhausted by long suffering, they at length took
refuge in the forced shade of exotic institutions.
We witnessed the miserable, but inevitable fate
of the constitutional studies of the groves of
Hartwell ; a fate which must ever attend insti-
tutions that have not been created by the genius
of a country, and with which the national cha-
racter can never sympathize. In France, pre-
vious to the great revolution, there existed all
the elements of a free constitution, although not
of the English constitution. In its old local
divisions, indicated by nature, consecrated by
custom, in its ancient states, its parliaments, its
corporations, its various classes of inhabitants,
its landed tenure, its ecclesiastical and chivalric
orders, there might have been found all that
variety of interests, whose balanced influences

29

would have sustained a free and durable con-
stitution. The French leaders nesrlected
these admirable materials. To secure equa-
lity, they decided on indiscriminate destruc-
tion : they not only destroyed law and cus-
tom, but they destroyed their country. They
destroyed Normandy, they destroyed Provence,
they destroyed Burgundy, they destroyed Gas-
cony ; not in name alone, but in very deed
and fact. They measured their land, and di-
vided it into equal geometrical departments,
without the slightest regard to di£ference of soil
or population, variety of manners, or diversity
of temperament ; and in this Laputan state that
great country still remains. Why the name of
France was preserved, it is difficult to compre-
hend. If, for its associations, could not these
Utilitarian legislators understand, that in de-
stroying the associations that clung to the name
of Brittany and Burgundy, they were destroying
so many wholesome elements of vigorous and
enduring government? Their sentiment re-
quired that they should still dwell in Paris,
beautiful and famous Paris. Were they so blind

f

30

as not to see, that the outraged syinpathj,
which would have recoiled from styling the ca-
pital "the city of the Seine,'' was equally of-
fended when the old dweller in Touraine found
that he was suddenly transformed into an inha-
bitant of the department of the Loire ?/When
Napoleon obtained supreme power, France was
not a country — it was a camp — a lawless and
disorderly camp. Napoleon disciplined it. He
found the land geometrically parcelled out, and
the French nation billeted on the soil. With
such elements of government, even Napoleon
could do no more; even with his unlimited
authority and indomitable will, all that he could
aspire to was to organize anarchy. The £m«
peror of the French was not one of your ab-
stract-principle gentlemen. His was eminently
a practical mind. He looked about for the ele-
ments of government, and be could discover no
better than those which had been created by
the national character, and hallowed by the na-
tional habits. Even his sagacious mind deferred
to the experience of ages, and even his uncon-
querable will declined 'a rivalry with the pre-

L.

31

scriptive conviction of an ancient people. He re-
established the tribunals ; he revived chivalry ;
he conjured up the vision of a nobility ; he
created the shadow of a church. He felt that
his empire, like all others^ must be supported by
institutions./ The rapid vicissitudes of his reign
prevented these establishments from maturing
into influence and power, and when Louis the
Eighteenth returned to the throne of his fathers,
he was called upon to establish a constitution
without being furnished with the elements to
form one. The puzzled monarch in despair,
with some degree, one would think, of that
Rabelaisian humour with which he was not alto-
gether untinctured, presented his subjects with
the constitution of another country. Could any-
thing be conceived more supremely ludicrous?
Was it in the power of the most ill-regulated
mind to break into folly more flagrant? The
lunatic with a crown of straw is as much a sove-
reign, as a country is a free country with a paper
constitution. France, without an aristocracy of
any kind, was ornamented with an upper cham-
ber of hereditary peers, and a second chamber,

32

invested with all the powers with which, after
more than five centuries of gvAduaied practice,
we ventured to entrust our House of Commons,
was filled with some hundreds of individuals,
who were less capable of governing a country
than a debating society of ingenious youth at one
of our universities!. The good Louis presented
his countrymen with a free constitution — drawn
up in a morning. He did that which the great
Napoleon never ventured to do. Louis the
Eighteenth achieved that in one morning which
in less favoured England has required nearly a
thousand years for its accomplishment. This
innocent monarch seems to have supposed that
the English constitution consists merely of two
rooms full of gentlemen, who discuss public
questions, and make laws in the metropolis at a
stated season of the year. The King of France
had no idea that political institutions, to be effec-
tive, must be founded on the habits and opinions
of the people whom they pretend to govern;
that the members of a representative body must
be composed of a class to which the people have
long looked up with respect and confidence ;

S3

and that these representatives must carry on their
affairs in a mode and spirit congenial and homo-
geneous with the prescriptive practice of the
community. The King of France, good, easy
man, had forgotten — M. De Lolme had not
taught him —that the Parliament of England was
only the last, though loftiest, gradation in a long
flight and series of ascending establishments ;
that not a man was entrusted with the exercise
of a political suffrage in England, who was not
already invested with the most precious office in
the realm, the duty of deciding upon the fortunes
and the lives of his fellow-citizens, and was thus
long, early, and accurately practised in the habits
of judgment and examination ; that nearly every
member of the Houses of Parliament was an
active magistrate of the realm, and in taking his
legislative seat, bore his quota of local respect to
the great aggregate of national reverence ; that
the vast institution of the Poor Laws alone con-
nected the thoughts and feelings of the unrepre-
sented peasants and populace of England with
the Parliament in which the local executors of
those statutes as magistrates, took their seats as

D

34

members. Louis the Eighteenth forgot, that in
almost every town in England there were corpo-
rations which were the express image of the
political constitution of the realm, and vestries in
which the local interests were debated by a re-
presentative body with an affectation of all the
forms and ceremonies of Westminster. Louis
the Eighteenth had no idea that his two rooms
full of gentlemen to be obeyed, must actually or
virtually, directly or indirectly, represent every
important interest in the kingdom. He had no
suspicion that it is not in the power of any legis-
lator that ever lived, or that ever will live, to
frame a political assembly aprioriy that shall re-
present all, 'or even a majority of, the interests
of a complicated society. The French Chambers
represented none — they were only fitted to be
the tools of a faction, and the tools of a faction
they became. The two Chambers constituted
by the Charter were nothing more than two de-
bating societies. I am only surprised that the
ludicrous imposture lasted so long ; but we must
take into consideration the exhaustion of France
when the exotic was introduced and planted in

35

its soil, and the unceasing vigilance and sleepless
care with which the delicate graft was tended by
the foreign powers, whose complacent approval
had sanctioned its adoption.

If the barren adoption of a form of govern*
ment by France, styled by courtesy the English
constitution, must be classed among the prime
follies of human conduct, what language are we
to use when the Anglo-Gallic scheme is gravely
introduced to the consideration of the Lazzaroni
of Naples and the Hidalgos of Spain ; we seem
to have arrived at the climax of human absur-
dity* The classical romance of Rienzi was not
more ridiculous than the first instance ; there is
no adventure in Don Quixote which can rival
the frenzy of the second. /in France, thanks*
to Equality and its crabbed fruits, there were no
prejudices to shock ; but when we read of the
sudden transplantation of institutions gradually
established in the course of centuries by the
phlegmatic experience of a Saxon people, into the
most southern soils of Europe, the glittering and
barbaric Sicilies, and a country which is the link
between Europe and Africa, and which in the

D 2

36

fertility of its soil, the temperature of its climate,
and the character of its inhabitants, resembles
Morocco more than England, we seem to be
perusing the mad pages of a political novel
poured forth by the wild and mystic genius of
some inmate of a German university. Ondine
or Sintram are more real : the pages of Hoff-
man less shadowy and more probable. I have
travelled over Andalusia and Sicily — I tra-
velled on horseback, for there were no roads — I
found a feodal nobility and a peasantry untinc-
tured, even in the slightest degree, by tetters,
and steeped in the grossest superstition : I
found agriculture generally neglected, or un-
changed in its pursuit since the days of Theo-
critus ; a teeming soil, no human energy ; no
manufactures, no police ; mountainous districts
swarming with bandits, plains whose vast still-
ness prepared me for the Syrian deserts ; occa-
sionally I reposed in cities where a comparative
civilisation had been obtained under the influ-
iesthood. And these are
is thought fit suddenly to
which regulate the civil

S7

life of Yorkshire and of Kent I We may cele-
brate the constitutional coronation of a Bavarian
in the Acropolis ; and surround his free throne
with the bayonets of his countrymen ; we may
hire Poles and Irishmen as a body-guard for the
sovereign, who mimics the venerable ceremonies
of Westminster as she opens the parliaments of
Madrid or Lisbon ; but invincible nature will
reject the unnatural novelties, and history, in-
stead of celebrating the victory of freedom, will
only record the triumph of folly.

Charles the Tenth struggled with the futility
of the Charter ; he passed years in an imprac-
ticable attempt and fruitless eflfort to govern
thirty-two millions of people with a silly piece
of paper. With good intentions but with no
talents, surrounded by creatures destitute of
every quality of statesmen, the king at length
attempted to rid himself, and the nation, of an
imposture which only supplied a faction with a
pretext. Charles failed, but even Charles the
Tenth nearly succeeded. Louis Philippe at the
head of a mob crying, " Vive la R^publique I^ es-
tablished a despotism. Is there no moral in this

38

rapid catastrophe ? Are we to be ever deaf and
ever blind ? Are we never to learn that a con-
stitution, a real constitution, is the creation of
ag'es, not of a day, and that when we destroy
such a constitution, we in fact destroy a nation.
Let us bestow a little more examination upon
the conduct of the French nation during their
last Revolution, their second great effort to
establish a free government. Let us contrast
La Fayette at the head of France in eighteen
hundred and thirty, with Lord Somers at the
head of England in sixteen hundred and eighty-
eight. The parallel will be instructive. When
'La Fayette had got rid of Charles the Tenth,
he found himself precisely in the same situation
in which that unfortunate monarch had suffered
throughout his reign ; he found himself in the
precise predicament in which Louis the Eigh-
teenth was placed when he returned from Hart-
well ; he occupied the exact site of Napoleon
when he declared himself First Consul. He
found himself at the head of a people without a
and not possessing any elements to
The creative genius of Napoleon

39

instantly devised some expedients, and until they
could be called into action, he depended upon
the teeming resources of his own strong mind,
and the devotion of a victorious army. Louis
the Eighteenth trusted to his allies for substan-
tial support, and offered the written description
of the constitution of another country as a pre-
text for the loyal allegiance of his own subjects.
Charles the Tenth had neither a confiding army
nor foreign allies ; he had neither the creative
genius of Napoleon, nor the epicurean adroitness
of Louis. La Fayette called out the National
Guard and changed the national colours for pre-
sent support, and then, that his revolution might
be something better than merely a revolution
of ribbons, he took refuge again in abstract
principles. Equality would not serve the pur-
pose again ; that blooming prostitute had shrunk
by this time into a most shrivelled and drivelling
harridan. For Equality the pupil of Washington
substituted the Sovereignty of the People.
The people shouted in its honour, all was satis-
factorily settled, and thirty-two millions were
again to be governed by a phrase.

40

Let me recall to your Lordship the tone and
temper with which the intelligence of these ex-
ploits was received in our own country. I was
indeed then absent ; but although the announce-
ment of this millennium reached me in the sha-
dow of the Pyramids, and two years elapsed be-
fore I returned to a country which I found so
changed, I returned in time to witness the still
exulting and still palpitating triumph of that
party, who are now so anxious, and so active in
their anxiety, to abrogate the clumsy and chance-
born institutions of England, and substitute in
their place their own modish inventions, formed
on the irrefragable basis of Reason and Utility.
There was no class of persons in England with
whom the junior French Revolution — I mean
the riot that placed the house of Valois on the
throne of Paris — was so popular in this country
as our own anti-constitutional writers. It was
the avowed consummation of all their theoretical
wishes : the practical adoption of the scheme in
England, was all that was requisite to secure the
completion of their patriotic satisfaction. I be-
lieve there was no individual in this country.

41

who more ardently admired the conduct of
France at that period than Mr. Bentham. I
have been assured this on good authority.
Within these last twelvemonths even, the prin-
cipal daily organ o( this new sect of statesmen
has more than once taunted Englishmen with
the fact that the French were now freer than
they, and has announced that the conscious-
ness of this fact would be ** the last blow to
the oligarchy/* I impute no bad motives to
these writers ; I condescend to none of those
" vituperative personalities " which their apostle
deprecates ; I avoid the ^^ fallacies ad odium "
which their evangelist so successfully exposes by
fallacies still more fallacious ; "^ I am content
ever to take the motives of individuals as I find
them. I give them full credit for sincerity.
But judge, oh ! judge by the result, of their capa-
bilities for government ; admire their political
prescience, and trust, if you will, their prac-
tical ability.

The constitution founded on the Sovereignty
of the People, has run even a shorter career than

* Book of Fallacies, p. 127—133.

42

the constitution founded on the Equality of Man :
one of the most gifted and civilized nations that
ever existed, is enthralled by an iron despotism ;
the liberty of the press is utterly destroyed ;
trial by jury virtually abrogated ; arbitrary im-
prisonment in daily practice ; the country co-
vered with Bastiles, and the Bastiles crowded
with state victims.

I turn from France in 1830 to England in
1688 ; from La Fayette to Lord Somers ; from
the abstract-principle politicians eulogised on all
occasions by our anti-constitutional writers, to
practical statesmen on all occasions the object of
their sneers, and whom one of their number has
recently published a quarto volume to decry.
No sooner had the nation got rid of the Popish
tyrant, than Lord Somers drew up the famous
Declaration of Right. Mark that title. A De-
claration of Right. This document enumerated
and claimed for Englishmen all the rights and
liberties to which they were entitled by laws
which James the Second had violated. So care-
ful were the leaders of 1688 of not vitiating or
injuring the valued title to our liberties, that

43

thej omitted in this great remedial statute all
mention of those further guarantees of our free-
dom which they had already devised) and which
they immediately afterwards proposed and passed
in Parliament. First, and before they made any
addition to their inheritance, they determined to
secure themselves in the clear freehold of their
rights. They were careful, while they were me-
ditating improvements and increase, that they
should not, from present neglect, be forced to
bring actions of ejectment hereafter for property
to which they had become entitled in the times
of Charles the First or the Plantagenets, and
which in their hot zeal and hurry they had now
overlooked. The Declaration of Right connected
the pedigree of our rights and liberties with the
Petition of Right, which again carried them up-
wards to the great Charter, in like manner de-
pendent on the charter of Henry Beauclerk,
and the laws of the Confessor. Whether it
ascended further, was now a matter of interest
only to the antiquary. A pedigree of six cen-
turies was proud enough even for our glorious
British freedom. In all this, Lord Somers exhi-

44

bited the same practical wisdom as had ani-
mated Stephen Langton and guided Selden.
Lord SomerS) I doubt not, was as conversant
with abstract principles of government as any
writer in the *^ Westminster Review ;'* for, a
quarter of a century before, they had been rife
enough in England, but Lord Somers knew to
what their adoption had eventually and speedily
led. He knew that there was a stern necessity
in society which would occasionally vindicate its
way above all law ; his recent experience would
have taught him, if nothing else, that occasional
revolutions in states were beyond the power of
human prevention ; but, like all other wise states-
men, he would not look upon these as the course
of politics, any more than the earthquake, or the
hurricane, as the course of nature. He blotted
their possibility out of the statute book, how-
ever he might choose to speculate over them in
a political treatise, in Sidney, or Harrington, or
Locke. He wished to obliterate from the mind
of the nation that awful truth, that a deed may
sometimes be necessary which is not lawful. He
knew very well that if a crisis were again to

45

occur, that should require such a sacrifice, the
native instinct of men would prompt them to
the exploit. They would read their purpose in
each other's eyes, and do the deed. Far from
braying out the sovereignty of the people, or
any such perilous stuff, he and his great asso-
ciates exerted themselves to the utmost to endow
King William with a legal and hereditary title.
They had consented to the necessary evil of a
revolution, but then they had carved the state

" As a dish fit for the Gods,
Not hewed it as a carcase fit for hounds.

»»

An English revolution is at least a solemn sacri-
fice : a French revolution is an indecent mas-
sacre.

Lord Somers and the English nation were
rewarded for their wisdom and their prudent
carriage, by securing for this realm nearly a cen-
tury and a half of the greatest order, prospe-
rity, and glory, that this country, or any other
country, ever enjoyed. And this leads me, my
Lord, to another great event in our history :
the Reform of the House of Commons, to which
I shall presently advert.

4G

/ I wish however, previously, to call your Lord-
ship's attention to the conduct of a sovereign,
who was placed in the same situation as Louis
the Eighteenth at the eame period ; but whose
policy, fortunately for himself and for his sub-
jects, materially differed from that of the brother
of the unhappy Charles the Tenth. The sove-
reign to whom I allude is the present King of
Prussia. The King of Prussia, like the King of
France, promised his subjects a Constitution ;
and we all remember for how many rabid years
this sovereign was the object of the virulent in-
vective of our own disaffected writers, who,
by-the-hye, seem equally anxious to destroy the
English constitution in England, and to substi-
tute it in every other country, for not redeeming
his pledge and fulfilling his promise. No news
arrived to the geniuses of our gazettes of the
holding of any Parliament at Berlin ; no ad-
vices reached them of any Dukes of Potsdam
or Posen moving constitutional addresses in
the Prussian House of Lords ^ there was not
en a rumour of any frank having yet been
3n in the handwriting of any honourable

47

representative of Koningsberg or Erfurt. What
royal treachery ! What base, despotic, holy- alli-
ance perfidy! But nations are not to be de-
ceived, and outraged, and trampled on with
impunity. The day of retribution was at hand ;
sooner or later the hour of popular vengeance
would arrive, and then the perfidious tyrant, in
spite of his standing army, would learn how
utterly vain is the struggle with the spirit of the
age, and how futile the final rivalry of force and
freedom. Prussia was undoubtedly to be the
fijst victim. Now this is no misrepresentation,
no exaggeration even of the tone in which the
disaffected writers of this country indulged for a
series of years against the King of Prussia. I
think it expedient to seize an occasional oppor-»
tunity of illustrating the sagacity and information
which the disaffected writers in this country in-
variably bring to the consideration of public
subjects, and especially to any speculations con-
nected with foreign politics. Abstract principles
and a, daily and dexterous practice in the art of
misrepresenting circumstances which, in the im-
perfect survey of gradual occurrence, cannot

i

48

always be fully comprehended even by the wisest
heads and the calmest minds, carry these wri-
ters through their domestic lucubrations with a
spanking breeze and flying colours; but when
we catch them fishing in strange waters, we are
better enabled to test the value of their barren
axioms, and to gauge the depth and spirit of
their acuteness and information. And so it hap-
pened, that when the party throughout Europe,
who, to use the words of Locke, " are the po-
pular asserters of public liberty and the greatest
engrossers of it too, and not unfitly called its
keepers — ambitious men who pull down well-
framed constitutions, that out of the ruins they
may build themselves fortunes," — when, I say, it
happened, that that restless and ii)triguing mi-
nority who ever have the greatest happiness of
the greatest number on their lips, succeeded in
1830 in overthrowing the Bourbon government
and embroiling Europe, in that period of general
commotion, when every European state was
more or less shaken with internal convulsions,
when Belgium revolted from Holland and Poland
from Russia, when the tricolor flag was hoisted

I

1

I

1

\

I

i

I

I

I

\

49

in Italy, when Spain summoned its Cortes, and
Portugal expelled its sovereign with foreign
bayonets, when even the Swiss Confederation
shook to its centre, and every minor German
state, from Baden to Brunswick, was the theatre
of revolutionary riots, — and last of all, but, oh !
indeed not least, when even Great Britain
yielded to the tempest, and, at least, a branch
of that mighty oak was severed from its vigorous
though ancient trunk; Prussia, enslaved and
indignant Prussia, governed by a perfidious
despot, whose realm was surrounded and even
divided in the midst of its territory by the very
states which were most inflamed, alone sent
forth neither a shout nor a murmur, and alone
remained tranquil and undisturbed. How was
this ? How did this accord with the Utilitarian
system of government? Was Prussia content
because it was tranquil? Was it the general
conviction that the greatest happiness of the
greatest number was secured by the influence of
its polity ? But that polity was absolute. It is
the interest of every man to be a tyrant and a
robber. Was then the King of Prussia neither

E

50

a tyrant nor a robber ? Was he mild, merciful,
just, beneficent, useful? How did this accord
with the Utilitarian system of morals ?

It appears to me, that a study of the policy
of Prussia during the last quarter of a century
may tend more to a solution of the great problem
of government than any exercise of reason with
which I am acquainted. By it we may learn, how
entirely the result of a principle depends upon its
method of application, and that that method of
application, to be beneficent, must be framed in
very strict, though not absolute, deference to
the existing civilisation of the country. That a
reforming minister must, above all things, be
skilful in adaptation, is perhaps but a barren
phrase; but this I will observe, that a wise
statesman will be careful that all new rights
shall, as it were, spring from out old establish-
ments. By this system alone can at the same
time the old be purified and the new rendered
permanent.

The French revolution was the death-blow in
civilised Europe to the long-declining feodal
system. An equality of civil rights was recog-

51

nised by the King of Prussia and his wise coun-
cillors as the basis of their new order of society.
And how did they obtain this great end ? Not
by a bombastic decree from Potsdam suddenly
braying the rights of man into the indefinite
ears of the motley subjects of the Prussian go-
vernment, and creating probably endless riots in
consequence ; but by a series of wise edicts
which) in the course of twelve years, entirely
abolished serfage, and effected a complete but
gradual revolution in the tenure of land, so that
at length the Prussian nobility found themselves
with no other privilege but the prefixion of a de-
finite article to their name. Almost simulta-
neously with the abolition of serfage among the
rural population, the citizens were emancipated
by a great municipal charter, which introduced
the system of popular election into towns, and
prepared the inhabitants for the function of even
higher duties. I assure you, my Lord, that the
municipal constitution of Prussia might have
been referred to with profit in those memorable
debates, in which you achieved so much ge-
neral benefit and acquired so much personal

52

honour. I now arrive at the most important
decree of the King of Prussia, and the esta-
blishment of which I hesitate not to class among
the wisest, the most benevolent, and the most
comprehensive institutions on record, and fairly
to entitle its illustrious originator to rank among
the most eminent legislators that have flourished.
Convinced that a practical assembly of national
representatives can never be collected except in
a country in which the inhabitants have been
long versed in the partial administration of affairs,
and consequently habituated to the practice of
public discussion, and anticipating that the hour
would arrive when such an assembly might in-
deed be holden at Berlin, the king, in 1815,
decreed the erection of Provincial States, to whose
supervision the interests of their respective pro-
vinces were intrusted, with full power to take
into consideration all measures, whether relating
to persons, property, or taxation, and to advise
with the king thereon, by the right and process
of petition. Here the powers of these states
ceased j their province was merely consultative ;
they were invested with no legislative functions.

53

In this great institution of consultative parlia-
ments, the King of Prussia, by an analogous
wisdom which cannot be too much admired, has
adopted as the basis of the future constitution of
his country that system of Remedial, as contra-
distinguished from Legislative Representation,
which was long the custom of England, and to
the influence of which upon the character of the
nation we mainly owe our efficient legislative
representation in the House of Commons.

There is no spectacle in the world more de-
lightful than that of a wisely governed and well
ordered community, and I could willingly dwell
upon the consideration of Prussian policy, were
the fortunes of that realm the sole subject of my
remarks, instead of being the incidental illustra-
tion of an argument. I might show how one of
the bravest, best disciplined, and most numerous,
armies in the world, was a popular force .; how
the boasted career of merit of the French empire
is reduced to such practical reality in Prussia,
that to rise to the highest appointments in the
state requires only a proportionate degree of
talent, industry, honesty, and study ; and lastly.

54

how the most philosophical system of national
education with which we are acquainted, is pre-
paring the rising generation of the realm for all
the duties of good citizens, loyal subjects, and
devoted patriots.

Having now I hope satisfactorily explained
why in the heady tumult of 1830, the subjects of
Prussia were alone loyal to their sovereign, I
will ask your Lordship what would have been the
situation of that country, then and now, had
Frederick William, at the same time as Louis
the Eighteenth, presented his subjects with the
same constitution, and a free press, and thus
avoided the diatribes of those enlightened jour-
nalists, who for so many years described and de-
nounced this great and good man as a perfidious
despot./ We know very well what would have
happened. A nominally representative assembly
would have met in Berlin, consisting of indi-
viduals totally inexperienced in the habits of
discussion, the practice of legislation, and the art
of government. Invested with power which
they could not exercise for any beneficial pur-
pose, and representing the nation in form only.

55

and not in spirit, they would have soon split into
factions, having no other object but their own
aggrandisement. An active click, through the
agency of a violent press, would have enlisted
the physical force of the people on their side, by
affecting an extraordinary zeal for popular in-
terests : having obtained a majority in the Cham-
ber by repeated elections, rendered necessary by
their factious conduct, they would have over-
thrown a series of administrations by a series of
factious resolutions. When they had rendered
the royal government impracticable, they would
have forced the King, in defence of the nation
and his crown, to some necessary, but uncon-
stitutional decrees, and then we should have had
^' three glorious and beautiful days'' at Berlin.
Perhaps in such a vicinity the conspiracy would
have been crushed, but where now would have
been the prosperity and patriotism and philo-
sophy and real freedom of Prussia ? The bayonet
would have been the only law, and a military
dungeon the only school of national education.
The King of Prussia was as careful that the rights
of his subjects should flow from the royal will,

56

their ancient government, as Stephen Langton,
Selden, and Lord Soiuers, that the liberties of
their countrymen should be traced to a simitar
source. All were alike practical men ; all
avoided the barren assertion of abstract rights ;
and the same destiny of continued welfare in all
probability awaits Prussia, that has long so
blessed our native land.

It appears to me, my Lord, that it is destined
to the free constitution of the United States of
North America to exercise the same fatal in-
fluence over the political society of the New
World, as the constitution of England has wielded
over that of the old. .' The constitution of the
United States was applied to the government of
Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Chili, by virtue of
the same peremptory and abstract principles,
that had selected the constitution of England for
the government of France, Sicily, Spain, and
Portugal } and the same results were acquired.
The European and the American States, that
have been the victims of this Quixotic spirit of
political Propagandism, have vied with each
other in successive revolutions, until at length

57

disorder, and even disorganization, have univer-
sally prevailed, except where anarchy has been
arrested by despotism. Why is this ? Why has
the republican constitution flourished in New
England, and failed in New Spain ? Why has
the congress of Washington commanded the re-
spect of civilized Europe, and the congresses of
Mexico, or Lima, or Santiago, gained only its
derision or disgust ? The answer is obvious :
the constitution of the United States had no
more root in the soil of Mexico, and Peru, and
Chili, than the constitution of England in that
of France, and Spain, and Portugal : it was not
founded on the habits or the opinions of those
whom it afi^ected to guide, regulate, and control.
There was no privity between the legislative in-
stitutions and the other establishments of these
countries. The electors and the elected were
both suddenly invested with offices, for the func-
tion of which th^y had received no previous edu-
cation, and no proper training ; and which they
were summoned to exercise without any simul-
taneous experience of similar duties. Had it
been the constitution of England, instead of that

58

of the United States, which they were seeking to
establish, these disqualifying circumstances alone
would have ensured failure ; but, in addition to
these disadvantages, picture to yourself the
frenzy of attempting to establish Republican
institutions, invented by the Puritans, and main-
tained by their peculiar spirit, not only among
an ignorant people educated in papal despotism,
but in revolted colonies possessing a powerful
church establishment and a wealthy aristocracy.
In their haste to establish freedom, these rudder-
less states have not secured independence ; their
revolutions have degenerated into riots ; and if
they be not wise, may yet turn out to be only
rebellions.

He is a short-sighted politician who dates the
constitution of the United States from 1780. It
was established by the pilgrim fathers a century
and a half before, and influenced a people prac-
tised from their cradles in the duties of self-
government. The pilgrim fathers brought to
their land of promise the laws of England, and
a republican religion ; and, blended together,
these formed the old colonial constitution of

59

Anglo- America. The transition from such a
government to the polity of Washington, was
certainly not greater in degree, than the differ-
ence between Great Britain of 1829, and our
country at this hour. The Anglo-Americans
did not struggle for liberty : they struggled for
independence ; and the freedom and the free in-
stitutions they had long enjoyed, secured for
them the great object of their severe exertions.
He who looks upon the citizens of the United
States as a new people, commits a moral, if not
an historical anachronism. /

Of the Reform of our House of Commons, it
is in this place only necessary to observe, that
the alleged increase of democratic power was
not founded on abstract rights, but that the
leaders and advocates of the Reform ostenta-
tiously, although ignorantly, recommended their
scheme as a restoration of the ancient spirit, and
a return to the ancient practice of the constitu-
tion. Whether that Reform originated in a
continental or a national impulse ; whether it were
an expedient or an imprudent measure; whe-
ther it were framed in harmony, or in hostility,

^

60

to our existing institutions; whether it really
developed the democratic elements of the coun-
try in their true and comprehensive sense, or
only increased the power and influence of a
sectarian minority ; whether that great settle-
ment, in short, will be conducive to the ultimate
prosperity of the community, the happiness of
the people, and the honour of the empire, are
great questions, from the discussion of which I
do not shrink, but they bear no reference to the
point at present under our examination, and are
fully treated in a work which for a long period
has engaged my time and study. My object
hitherto has been to prove by reference to the
experience both of the Old and the New World,
and of the several states of which they respec-
tively consist, that political institutions, founded
on abstract rights and principles, are mere nul-
lities ; that the only certain and legitimate
foundation of liberty is law ; that if there be no
privity between the old legal constitution of a
country and the new legislature, the latter must
fall ; and that a free government on a great
scale of national representation is the very gra-

61

dual work of time, and especially of preparatory
institutions.

>

It was a conviction of tbe soundness of these
principles that guided our forefathers in that
prudent practice, which we have hitherto been
in the habit of dignifying by the venerable title
of the Wisdom of our Ancestors, a phrase once
ever on the grateful lips of Englishmen, but now
the object of scorn and ridicule by those who
fancy themselves very profound, but who, in
reality, are especially superficial. According to
the most eminent of the Utilitarian schoolmen,
in his Book of Fallacies, we have all the wisdom
of our ancestors and our own into the bargain.
The great detector of the deceits of political
logic, has here, according to his custom,
involved himself in a position as deceptive as
any of those from which he intended to dislodge
his opponents. The fallacy of the great Utili-
tarian schoolman consists in confounding wisdom
with knowledge. We may have all the know-
ledge of our ancestors, and we may have more ;
but it does not follow that we have all the wis*
dom of our ancestors, and we may have less.

><

VJ

62

In using the phrase " wisdom of our ancestors/*
we, in fact, refer to the conduct of those of our
ancestors who were wise, and when we have
recourse to this phrase in reference to political
conduct, we especially allude to those of our
forefathers, those rare great men, who in seasons
of singular emergency, difficulty, and peril, hare
maintained the state, and framed, fostered, de^
veloped, and established, our political institutions.
Let us take a rapid survey of our wise ancestors
in a political sense, since the Reformation. We
will commence by a king, that extraordinary
being, Henry the Eighth, for certainly he must
not be omitted ; Burleigh claims a place, and
Cecil, and assuredly Walsingham j then we may
count Sir Edward Coke, and Selden, Strafford,
and Pym, the Protector, Lord Clarendon, Sir
William Temple, King William, Lord Somers,
the Duke of Marlborough, the Duke of Argyll,
Sir Robert Walpole, Lord Mansfield, Lord
Hardwicke, Edmund Burke. The name of a
twentieth great statesman since the Reformation
previous to our own age, does not easily occur to
me, although I would include Lord Bolingbroke

63

for reasons I may hereafter oflfer ; and I have
some doubt whether it would be possible, even
with research, to fix upon another score. Now,
it is possible, that having the benefit of all these
men's knowledge, we may actually know more
than these men ; but suppose we are called upon
to act to-morrow, and act, as is very probable,
very unwisely, we may then find that we have
not all these men's wisdom.

M. Guizot, who is so learned in British his-
tory, who writes even our annals, and edits our
political memoirs, doubtless, during the three
glorious days, and the subsequent settlement, in-
wardly congratulated the French people on being
directed by a statesman, who had all the know-
ledge of Lord Somers, " and something more/*
But, where are the French people now, and
what is M. Guizot ? A striking evidence that
a man may be very knowing without being very
wise. Throughout the whole of our history
we observe, that the leading men who have
guided the fortunes of our Commonwealth in
times of great difficulty and danger, have in-
variably agreed in one line of policy, namely, to

6*

eschew abstractions. This resolution is the dis-
tinguishing feature of English statesmanship ; it
is the principal cause of the duration of the
English state ; and herein eminently consists the
"wisdom of our ancestors. /

But, my Lord, to confess the truth, I have my
suspicions, that the new school of statesmen,
with all their affected confidence in abstract
principles, and all their valorous determination
to construct our coming commonwealth on a
basis of pure political science, have some mis-
givings that this great result is not to be entirely
obtained by the virgin influence alone of their
boasted philosophy ; and I am confirmed in this
imagination by the distrustful circumstance of ^
their simultaneously condescending^ amid all their
theory, to avail themselves for the purpose of
advancing their object, of a great practical mis-
representation of the form and spirit of our con-
stitution. / For it is curious to observe that while
1 ' they pretend to offer us an unfailing test of the

excellence and expediency of all political insti-
tutions, they are at the same time indefatigable
in promulgating the creed that the branch of our

65

legislature, hitherto styled the House of Com^
mons, is, in fact, the House of the People, and that
the members of that assembly are consequently
and Absolutely representatives of the People. Vo^
POPULi vox Dei, is a favourite adage, and ever on
these persons' tongues : so that if the House of
Commons be the House of the People, it is also the
House of God ; it is omniscient and omnipotent;
— a convenient creed ! There was a time when
our kings affected to rule by divine right. It
cost our fathers dear to root out that fatal super*
stition. But all their heroic labours will prove
worse than fruitless, if the divine right of kings
is to be succeeded by the divine right of the
House of Commons. In such a belief, I, for one,
see no security for our cherished liberties ; and
still less a guarantee for our boasted civilisation :
in such a belief it seems to me the prolific seeds
are deeply sown of tyranny and of barbarism,
and if this principle is to be the foundation of
our future polity, it requires, in my opinion, no
great gift of inspiration to foretell, that all those
evils are impending for this country which are
the inevitable consequences of its destinies being

F

66

regulated by a vulgar and ignoble oligarchy.
My Lord, I do not believe that the House of
Commons is the House of the People, or that
the members of the House of Commons are the
representatives of the People. I do not believe
that such ever were the characters, either of the
House of Commons or the members of the
House of Commons ; I am sure that such are
not now the characters of that assembly, or of
those who constitute it, and I ardently hope that
such will never be the characters.

The Commons of England form an Estate of
the realm, and the members of the House of
Commons represent that Estate. They repre-
sent nothing more. It is a very important estate
of the realm ; it may be the most important
estate. Unquestionably, it has of late years
greatly advanced in power j but at this very mo-
ment, even with all the accession of influence
conferred upon it by the act of Reform, it has
not departed from the primary character con-
templated in its original formation ; it consists
of a very limited section of our fellow-subjects,
invested, for the general advantage of the com-
monwealth, with certain high functions and

67

noble privileges. The House of Commons is
no more the House of the People than is the
House of Lords; and the Commons of Eng-
land, as well as the Peers of England, are nei-
ther more nor less than a privileged class, pri-
vileged in both instances for the common good,
unequal doubtless in number, yet both, in com-
parison with the whole nation, forming in a nu-
merical estimation, only an insignificant fraction
of the mass.

Throughout these observations, in speaking
of the English constitution, I speak of that
scheme of legislative and executive government
consisting of the King and the two Houses of
Parliament; but this is a very partial view of
the English constitution, and I use the term
rather in deference to established associations,
than from being unconscious that the polity of
our country consists of other institutions, not
less precious and important than those of King,
Lords, and Commons. Trial by Jury, Habeas
Corpus, the Court of King's Bench, the Court of
Quarter Sessions, the compulsory provision for
the poor, however tampered with, the franchises

F 2

68

of municipal corporations, of late so recklessly
regarded by short-sighted statesmen, are all
essential portions of the English constitution,
and hare been among the principal causes of the
excellent operation, and the singular durability
of our legislative and executive Government.
The political institutions of England have sprung
from its legal institutions. They have their
origin in our laws and customs. These have
been the profound and perennial sources of their
unexampled vigour and beneficence, and unless
it had been fed by these clear and wholesome
fountains, our boasted Parliament, like so many
of its artificial brethren, would soon have
dwindled and dried up, and, like some vast
canal, filled merely with epidemic filth, only
been looked upon as the fatal folly of a nation.

We talk much at the present day of the Re-
presentative principle ; yet how little is that prin-
ciple understood I An assembly may be repre-
sentative without being elective. No one can
deny that the Church of England is at this day,
not only virtually, but absolutely, faithfully, and
efficiently represented in the House of Lords by

69

the Bishops, yet these Lords of Parliament are
not elected by their clergy. Previous to the
Reformation, the mitred abbots took their seat
in the Upper House. Who can deny that these
great officers were the direct representatives of
their powerful and wealthy institutions ? If a
representative assembly be not necessarily elec-
tive, so also it may be elective without being
legislative. Representation may be purely re-
medial, and such for a long period was the cha-
racter of English representation. This remedial
representation arose out of some peculiar ele-
ments of our ancient parliament, an assembly
which, besides being a great national council,
was also a high court of justice. Our ancient
parliaments, like those of other feodal countries,
were formed by the simultaneous gathering of a
vast number of estates, tribunals, and public
officers, from all parts of the kingdom, who met
to convey to the Sovereign information of the
condition of his realm, and to assist him in the
execution of justice between his subjects. Among
those who mingled with the prelates of the land,
and the earls and barons of the kingdom, were

70

certein chosen delegates of the counties, who
were, in fact, elected by a particular order or
estate of the kingdom, to act, not as their legis-
lators, but as their judges. These personages
were prepared to afford immediate information
to the Sovereign of the state of their districts ;
and, previous to their arrival at the great council,
they obtained, by the inquisitions of the juries
of the hundreds, an accurate report of the con-
dition of the county, of the necessities of the
lieges, of the " oppressions'* to be redressed, and
of their ability to contribute to the exigencies of
the state.

These deputies were members of a class of
our population, which, from the important part
it was subsequently destined to fill in the
fortunes of our country, requires our particular
attention. I allude to the estate of the Knights.
In spite of some cloudy cavils of Madox, our
modern inquirers agree with the learned Selden,
that every immediate tenant of the Crown in
England was a baron by virtue of his tenure,
and as such entitled to be personally summoned
to the King's Great Court or Council of Parlia-

71

menti and therein to take his seat. But in pro-
cess of time these militciry tenants of the Crowa
had, by the alienation and spb'tting of feofs, be-
come in number so considerable, and in personal
influence, in comparison with their high privi'-
lege, so moderate, that the Crown neglected to
summon them to its councils, and, indeed, the
burthen of attendance in Parliament Was so
grievous to men, whose limited estates required
their personal supervision, that the royal neglect
was by themselves considered any thing but a
grievance. In the thirteenth century, these
royal tenants formed the great bulk of the free-
holders of the kingdom, for I need not remind
your Lordship that it was not then uncommon
for a tenant in capite to hold even a fraction of
a knight's fee. These lower nobility, or minor
barons, as they were styled, in gradually ceasing
to be insignificant peers, subsided however into
a most powerful equestrian order, in which the
lesser portion of the freeholders, who were only
mesne tenants, by degrees also merged. And
thus was established the estate of the Knights.
The local government of the country was in

72

the hands of this order. In their county court,
under the style and title of " The Communis/
or Commonalty of the County," a phrase which
has been eo much misunderstood, but which
originally implied nobility, this estate met to
elect one of their number as the governor or
guardian of the shire, their choice subject, bow-
ever, to the royal ratification. When the King
held bis great council, he directed the sheriff of
the county to return two or more knights to
present to him the condition of their district.
These knights, being sworn, summoned before
them the jurors, as witnesses of the hundreds;
and having obtained from these inquisitions all
necessary information, repaired to the great
council of the kingdom with tbeir quota of sta-
tistical intelligence. The transition, from being
merely the selected councillors of their Sove-
reign, to being the virtual representatives of
their order, was natural, easy, apd rapid ; and
thus this important and numerous estate of the
' ■ ' J in fact represented by deputation

council — a representation, however,
dial, and not legislative : they came

73

to impart knowledge and inferentially to proffer
counsel, to present to the King the state of his
realm and the ^^ grievances'' of his subjects, and
to assist the monarch in deciding suits arising in
their districts^ and in ascertaining the just ap*
portionment of the general taxation. As from
councillors and judges they became represen-
tatives, so also in time their sanction was held
necessary to the tax which originally they
had met only to estimate by their information.
In time also their consent was equally held ne-
cessary to the laws, which, however, they never
originated. It is, indeed, very questionable
whether the great office of legislation was then
exercised even by the more potent estates of the
kingdom themselves^ who appeared personally
in Parliament, the Clergy, and the Peers. In
those days legislation was the province of the
clerk-like councillors of the Sovereign, and I do
not myself infer any degrading inferiority in the
estate of the knights, from the circumstance of
their parliamentary attendance assuming merely
a remedial character. Thus, gradually, a most
important constituent portion of our House of

74

Commons developed itself, and so little has any
preconceived theory ever influenced the forma-
tion of our political institutions, and so entirely
have they emanated from the legal economy of
the land, that I have myself little doubt that
this convenient method, by which the English
knights assumed their fitting place in the council
of their Sovereign, was derived from ancient
and analogous, though occasional, customs of
our country, which prevailed in England before
the Conquest, and which pervaded the Teutonic
jurisprudence in every land. The Court of
Echevins alone will occur to those who are
learned in British history, and curious in con-
stitutional inquiries.

Thus we find, in the thirteenth century, the
King of England surrounded in his council by
three estates of his realm — his Prelates, his
Peers, and his Knights. We approach now an
interesting period in the history of our political
constitution. The reign of Henry the Third is
one of the most important in our annals. The
great struggle between the Norman king and
the feodal aristocracy was at this time conducted

75

on both sides with unexampled energy. Un-
doubtedly, the great body of the nation in these
struggles favoured the aristocracy. In ^England,
unlike the Continent, the King was powerful.
We owe our liberties to our nobility. But I am
inclined to attribute the sympathy which has ever
subsisted between the English and their aristo-
cracy, to a more influential cause than the mere
power and consequent tyranny of the Crown, and
to this cause, which at present flourishes, and to
which may be principally ascribed the sin-
gular prosperity of this country, I shall here-
after advert.

Under the Norman kings, and especially under
Henry the Second, the English towns had made
rapid advances in wealth and population.
Charters of incorporation became frequent. In
the latter part of the twelfth century, it was im-
possible for a sagacious politician not to per-
ceive, that new and powerful interests were
springing up in the Commonwealth, or to shut
his eyes to the political privileges which awaited
the growing wealth and increasing numbers of
the citizens and burgesses of England. But as

76

from the very nature and origin of these mural
communities, the sovereign had the undoubted
and unquestioned prerogative of imposing tall-
ages or taxes on cities and boroughs at pleasure,
there existed no obvious or urgent inducement
to summon the inhabitants to the great council
of estates, which principally assembled to appor-
tion the aids to be raised on their separate orders.
Although the Earl of Leicester, who headed the
rebellious barons, unquestionably possessed many
of the eminent qualities becoming the leader of
a great party, I am not disposed to behold any
very revolutionary tendency in his conduct when,
mighty as were the results, in his memorable
Parliament of 1264, in addition to the Prelates,
the Magnates, and the Knights^ he decided to issue
writs of summons to " two honest, lawful, and
discreet '* citizens and burgesses from every city
and burgh. I am more inclined to believe, that
this great movement was rather dictated by a
politic apprehension that, however the nation
might be disposed to view in complacent silence
his assumption of many of the prerogatives of
the King, who was his prisoner, they might per-

haps have expected that an exception would be
made in favour of the royal right of arbitrary
taxation. I suspect that he was of opinion^ that
the tallages would be forthcoming with more
readiness if the citizens were flattered by grant-
ing those contributions as a favour, which were
before exacted as a right. Certain it is, that De
Montfort anticipated in some degree the neces*
sities of his age ; for when, under the vigorous
policy of the next reign, civil peace again flou-
rished, and the legitimate sovereign found it con-
venient to avail himself of the new machinery
which his rebellious subject had introduced, no
privilege ever conferred by a king was ever re-
ceived with more discontent than the right of
returning members to his Parliament by his loyal
towns. These honest burghers were loth to
leave their homes and business for pursuits with
which they were little acquainted, and society for
which they were unfitted. Petitions to be ex-
empted from the grievance of sending members
to Parliament are not uncommon in our early
records; many burgesses when appointed, de-

78

dined to serve, and absented themselves from
the council ; and to remedy these inconveni-
ences, the sheriff was invested with a discre-
tionary power of omitting boroughs in his re-
turn. It would seem that from experience,
the inhabitants of towns preferred, the arbi-
trary taxation of their sovereign to the grants of
their representatives, and that these worthy
traders were generally cajoled by the great
council into contributions more liberal, than
their calmer moments in their stores and count-
ing-houses approved.

We must however guard ourselves from sup-
posing that these citizens and burgesses, who were
summoned to Parliament, were absolutely elect-
ed by the inhabitants of the towns as their re-
presentatives. Their presence in Parliament is
another instance of representation without elec-
tion. They were often nominated by the sheriff
of the county ; and even when that great officer;
from negligence or favour, permitted the return
to be made by those more interested in the
transaction, the nomination was confined to the

79

email governing body, who returned two of
their members, in general very unwilling mis-
sionaries to the great council.

At first the three Estates of the realm held
themselves aloof; the Knights by right and
custom taking their seats among the Peers,
while the citizens and burgesses remained in
humble attendance, and after settling the amount
of their tallages, gave themselves no further con-
cern with the public business, but cheerfully re-
turned to their homes and affairs. But the two
great causes which had simultaneously degraded
the lower nobility into mere gentry, and raised
the burghers into comparative importance still
operated : the increased division of land rendered
the first class less influential and more numer-
ous; the increase of commerce, the last more
powerful and more wealthy. The chasm between
the magnates and the lower nobility or knights,
became each year wider and more profound : the
boundary that separated the knights from the
burghers each year less marked and definite. It
is impossible to fix nicely the period when
Parliament was divided into two houses ; but I

80

am inclined to place it towards tlie end of the
reign of Edward the First. It is easier to ascer-
tain the principles on which the memorable
division was established* Between the prelates
and the magnates on the one hand, and the
knights and burgesses on the other, there existed
this memorable distinction. The first were in
themselves estates of the realm ; the last were
only representatives of estates. To induce the
knights, however, to quit their noble companions,
of whom the law still held them as the personal
equals, and mix with the humble burghers, re-
quired some politic dexterity. It was at length
settled that a new estate of the realm should
be created, styled the Estate of the Commons or
Commonalty, a title, as I have before observed,
of great dignity, implying nobility, and formerly
confined to the landed proprietors. The burghers
were flattered by merging into the landed
gentry of the country, and thus obtaining the
dignity of the lesser nobility, and the knights
were compensated for the sullen sacrifice on
their part, by giving their title to the new
estate, and impressing their peculiar character

81

on the new chamber in which, for a very long
period of out history, they naturally took the
lead. Yet even then some time elapsed before
the Knights condescended to renounce their old
privilege of apportioning the tax of their ori-
ginal order, and blending the aids of the Lower
House of Parliament.

Thus have I traced, my Lord, and I assure
you not without some difficulty, the history of
the formation of our House of Commons. And
how to what did this great revolution in the
constitution of our country amount ? To no-
thing more nor less than the establishment of
AN EQUESTRIAN CHAMBER. If such Were its ori-
ginal character, that character has been main-
tained throughout the whole of our history, and
that character, as I will shortly show, has not
been affected by the recent Act of Reform. It
never was the House of the People; it is not the
House of the People. The members of the
House of Commons never were the representa-
tives of the people : they are not the representa-
tives of the people. They always were, and
they are still, the representatives of the Com-

G

82

roons, an estate of the realm privileged as the
other estates, not meeting personally for the
5ake of convenience, but by its representatives,
and constituting, even with its late consider-
able accession of members, only a small section
of the nation. We have a curious instance how
accurately this distinction was observed in the
time of Henry the Fourth j and how perfect
was the order of Parliament in that reign. For
when the King met his Parliament, and having
addressed the estates of the Lords Spiritual and
Temporal, then turned to the House of Com-
mons, he promised that he " would do nothing
against the liberty/ of the estate for which they
had come to Parliament^ nor against the liber-
ties of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal." The
impudent misrepresentation of our anti-consti-
tutional writers, originates in an ignorant mis-
conception of words. If the House had been
called the House of Knights, or rather the
House of Squires, which is the literal meaning
of the word Commons, we should have heard
nothing of this dangerous nonsense, by virtue of
which it is sought that the whole power of the

realm shall be concentrated in one of the estate^,
and that too, one recently remodelled for factious
purposes. An Estate of the People involves a
contradiction in terms, for an estate is a popular
class established into a political order. If, there*
fore, the Sovereign had established the Lower
House as the estate of the people, he would
have virtually declared that the clergy and the
nobles, the most influential part of the nation,
were not a portion of the people. Far from
this, the cautious monarch refrained from even
establishing the citizens into a separate estate ;
instead of doing this, he flattered their vanity
while he checked their independence, and while
he raised them to the rank of Commons, he
secured, to use the epithet in its popular, not its
correct sense, an aristocratic character for each
estate of his realm. As the Upper House con-
sisted of two estates of the realm, the Clergy and
the Peers, so also the Lower House might
equally have consisted of the representatives of
two estates of the realm, the Knights and the
Burgesses. But this was avoided. Yet suppose
the Sovereign had thought fit to establish a sepa*

G 2

84

rate estate of the citizens, would the lower
House any more have represented the people ?
By no means. Other classes of the people would
still have remained unrepresented, and classes
the most numerous ; for instance^ the peasantry.
Such estates were not unknown in the middle
ages, and even at this day an Estate of the Pea*
santry meets in the Diets of Sweden^ and the
Storthings of Norway.

By this final constitution of the English par-
liament, the seal was set to that glorious charac-
teristic of our laws, which various causes had
been for a long period silently combining to
create ; to which I mainly attribute the freedom^
honour, and prosperity of our country^ and our
singular preservation from that whirlwind of
outraged passion and opinion, which swept over
Europe during the end of the last century, and
still threatens Christendom with its wild and
moaning wail. This glorious characteristic of
our laws is our equality of civil rights. By the
formation of the House of Commons, the great
body of the lesser nobility of England formally
renounced those rights of peerage, the practical

85

enjoyment of which had been long escaping them;
and instead of that gallant, but adventurous
swarm of personages, who, under the perplexing
title of nobles, abounded in Europe before the
great French revolution gave the last blow to
the crumbling gothic edifice of feodal polity, men
who were distinguished from ordinary freemen
by privileges inherent in their blood, and held
their pedigrees, often their only muniments, as
valid exemptions from the toils and cares of
honest industry ; men who were free from con-
tributing to the public burthens ; who alone
might draw the sword ; and whose daughters
were defended by law from profaning alliances
with roturiers — arose in this our favoured land
of Albion, a class of individuals noble without
privilege, noble from the generosity of their na-^
ture, the inspiration of their lineage, and the
refinement of their education ; a class of indi-
viduals who, instead of meanly submitting to
fiscal immunities, support upon their broad and
cultivated lands all the burthens of the state ;
men who have conquered by land and sea, who
have distinguished themselves in every honour-

f
\

86

able profession, and acquired fanae in every de
partment of learnings and in every province of
science and of art; who support the poor in-
stead of plundering them, and respect the court
which they do not fear j friends alike to liberty
and order, who execute justice and maintain
truth — the gentlemen of England ; a class of
whom it is difficult to decide, whether their
moral excellence or their political utility be most
eminent, conspicuous, and inspiring.

In due and sympathising deference to the les«
ser nobility, their former equals who subsided
into gentry, the magnates were careful to arro-
gate to themselves no privileges which were not
necessary and incidental to them in their cha-
racter of an estate of the realm, and their capacity
ef hereditary legislators of a free people. So
that even their blood was not ennobled, and their
children ranked only as Commons; thus dis«
tinctly announcing that their rank was a politi-
cal institution for the public weal, and not a
privilege for their private gratification. Indeed,
it would not be too much to affirm, that the law
of England does not recognise nobility. It re-

87

cognises the peerage, and it lias invested that
estate with august accessaries ; but to state that
a man's blood is ennobled is neither legal nor
correct, and the phrase, which has crept into our
common parlance, is not borrowed from the law-
yers, but from the heralds. Thus, I repeat, was
consummated that glorious characteristic of our
laws, the equality of our civil rights, and to this
cause I refer the sympathy which has ever sub-
sisted between the great body of the English
nation and their aristocracy.

Liberty flourished under the Plantagenets —
and for this reason, that the aristocracy headed
the nation, and the House of Commons soon
learnt to combine with the discontented party
among the Peers. The remedial character ot
our representation rapidly expanded into the
legislative j and the judge matured into a law*
maker. Seldom has the crown of this realm
circled a more able and vigorous brow than that
of our third Edward : his reign too was long
and eminently prosperous. Yet as early as this
reign, the illegality of raising money without
consent of Parliament was firmly and practically

88

established^ as well as the necessity of tbe concur*
rence of the twoHouses, in any alteration of tbe law.
In this reign too, for the first time, the council-
lors of the crown were impeached by the Com-
mons, though there is little doubt that the lower
House would not have ventured on so bold an
advance in authority, had they not been se-
cretly stimulated by the Prince of Wales, an4
upheld by the majority of the Peers, jealous of
the intrigues of the Duke of Lancaster against
the interests of the heir apparent. The Parlia-
ment that had ventured to resist an Edward, dared
to control a Richard. The Commons now in-
quired into the public expenditure, and even re-
gulated the economy of the royal household.
The Lancastrian kings owed their throne to the
Parliament, and the Parliament was mindful of
the obligation. Under these three sovereigns
the present Constitution of England was amply,
if not perfectly, developed. The right of taxa-
tion in the two Houses was never questioned 5
the direction of the public expenditure was
claimed and practised ; the illegality of royal
ordinances declared ; ministers too were im-

89

peached and punished, and finally the privileges
of Parliament for the first time established. But
perhaps the most important change in our con-
stitutional system, was the introduction in the
reign of Henry the Sixth, of complete statutes
of the Commons, under the title of Bills, instead
of their old method of Petitions ; by these means
the sovereign was obliged to sanction or to reject
the propositions of hia Parliament without qua-
lification; and as it had been previously a maxim
of parliamentary practice, that all laws should
originate in the form of petitions fropi the lower
House, the legislative right of the Commons
was now completely and firmly established.
, If liberty flourished under the Plantagenets,
it faded under the Tudors, How was this?
Compare the reigns of the third Edward, oi*
the second Richard, with those of Henry the
Eighth and Elizabeth, and no one can shut his
eyes to the vast progression which our country
bad made in all the elements of civilisation.
We were much more populous, infinitely
wealthier. We enjoyed a great commerce, our
manufactures were considerable, our ancient

90

military reputation maintained, our advance in
arts indisputable. Why were we less free ?
Why had that bold House of Commons, to
whom the warlike and impatient Edward had
to bow before he could carry on a struggle flat-
tering to the fame of England, sunk into a ser-
vile crew, who witnessed without a murmur the
forced loans of a privy seal and a benevolence ?
Where were the men who, under the wily
Henry the Fourth, had declared the royal or-
dinances illegal ? Humbling themselves before
royal proclamations, crushed by the oppression
of the Star Chamber, and yielding without even
a remonstrance to the enormity of the Council.
Who now dared to inquire into the public ad-
ministration ? Why were not Wolsey and Bur-
leigh impeached as well as Lord Latimer and
Suffolk ? Who remembered the statute of Henry
the Sixth, ^^for the punishment of such as assault
any on their way to the Parliament,'' when any
member who offended the sovereign or the
minister was, in scornful defiance of his privi-
lege, instantly imprisoned ; and Henry the
Eighth vowed he would behead any of the Com-

91

mons who opposed his will? We cannot ac-
count for this extraordinary change in the cha-
racter of our House of Commons by the usual
reason of a standing army. Henry the Eighth
commanded fifty beefeaters, and Elizabeth trusted
to the guardianship of the trained bands. The
truth is, the House of Commons was no longer
supported by the peers, and the aristocracy no
. longer headed the nation. The great advance
in public liberty under the Plantagenets, was
carried on by a Parliament in which a perfect
understanding subsisted between the two Houses.
We owe that bold scheme of popular govern-
ment to which Selden and Pym in other days
were content to appeal, to " the wisdom of their
ancestors," and to the united and harmonious
efforts of the three estates of the realm.

The wars of the Roses were mortal to the great
peers and chivalric commons of England, and
the tints of those fatal flowers were only emble-
matic of the terror and the blood that they occa-
sioned. Unquestionably these evils in the course
of time might have been remedied, and, doubt-
less, in the natural order of events a new race

92

of great national leaders would have arisen, who
might have restored that noble freedom and that
sweet equality which rose under the Planta-
genet^, struggled under the Stuarts, and tri^
umpbed under the benignant sway of the House
of Brunswick : but when, in the reign of Henry
the Eighth, the aristocracy afforded some indi*
cations of reviving power, a new feature appeared
in European, and especially in English politics,
which changed the whole frame and coloured
the complete aspect of our society — religious
DISSENSION. It was by balancing the great
parties in which this new spirit, so fertile in dis-
cord, divided the nation, that the Tudors, and
especially Elizabeth and her statesmen, succeeded
in establishing her power, until they delivered
over to her successor the sceptre of a despot. I
have myself no doubt that, although in its nature
intimately and essentially connected with the
cause of civil liberty, the immediate effect of the
reformation on our English polity was anything
but favourable to the growth of our liberties and
the establishment of our political institutions.
The civil despotism of the king was in that age

93

the consequence of his religious supremacy. The
creation of the High Commission Court alone,
and the sanction which the religious passions of
a large party in the nation gave to that dark tri-
bunal, afforded a fatal precedent for an appli-
cation of analogous discipline to civil affairs,
which in practic-e reduced our constitution to a
polity befitting the meridian of Madrid, or even
Constantinople.

If we survey the constitution of the House of
Commons under the Tudors, we shall find that
although it experienced several very considerable
changes, they were far from effecting any de-
parture from the original character of that as-
sembly. It did not in any degree more become
the House of the People. It still remained the
representative of an estate of the realm, an estate
in number, I apprehend, not very considerable ;
inferior probably to the fleeting population of
any of the large fairs then common in the coun-
try, and at this day not superior to the population
of a second-rate capital. The House, when it
was first established, consisted of seventy-four
knights, and, for the causes I have before stated,

9*

of a verj fluctuating number of burgeates : ui
early times tbey amounted to two hundred and
sixty. The knights, in spite of their minority,
seem to have indulged in no jealousy of their
humbler brethren, but appear to have exercised
in the chamber which had derived from them itci
name, all that superior authority to which their
noble lineage and territorial possessions entitled
them./lt is curious that the idea of repre-
sentation, as relative to population, never appears
to hare entered into the consideration of our
ancestors : York and Rutland returned the same
number of representatives. I ascribe the ap-
parent anomaly to the circumstance of the con-
stituent body being generally very limited, and
particularly so in the northern counties. It was
never intended that the population should be re-
presented, but a particular class of it, and as
the spirit of the body pervaded all the county
-epresentatives, a knight of Rutland doubtless
onsidered himself virtually as much the guardian
f the knights of the county of York or Lancaster
s of his own shire or that of Huntingdon,
loreover, there are reasons to believe that ear-

95

Her than is usually imagined the English knights
were in the habit of being returned for boroughs;
and, I apprehend that the majority of the
House of Commons in the reigns of the Lan-
castrian kings consisted of the descendants of our
former minor barons.

On the accession of Henry the Eighth, the
burgesses were in number two hundred and
twenty- four. Henry extended county repre-
sentation to. Wales, Chester, and Monmouth, and
even summoned burgesses from his Scotch town
of Berwick, and bis French garrison of Calais.
Edward the Sixth created fourteen boroughs and
revived ten : Mary added twenty-one, and Eli-
zabeth sixty. In most of these instances the
right of representation was conceded to insig-
nificant places and confined to mere nomination.
Elizabeth was the first who worked on an ex-
tensive scale the great parliamentary mine of
Cornwall, and liberally enfranchised fishing-
towns and miserable villages. The object of
the Tudor sovereigns in this increase of the
House of Commons was, to command majorities
on the great religious questions. Arbitrary in

r I O

every other respect, tbey were not uawitling to
share with the compliant orthodoxy of their Par-
liament the responsibility of those extraordinary
statutes which form an epoch in the philosophy
of legislation.

But the Tudors, in this extensive exercise of
the power of parliamentary appointment, intro-
duced no heretical elements into the constitution
of our House of Commons. As early as Edward
the Second the representatives of more than
twenty boroughs had been added by the King to
the members of that assembly. I do not believe .
that the representation of our boroughs was
originally elective. Far from being of opinion
that the popular character of the third estate
had gradually become corrupt and diminished
previous to the late Act of Reform, I believe, on
the contrary, that since the accession of the
Stuarts it had gradually become more vigorous
and more comprehensive. Our Parliament long
possessed, and indeed in some degree still retains,

lal character of a royal council. The
our Sovereigns was to surround them-

' the notable subjects of their realm, and

97

the j proceeded in the shorts and simple^ man-
ner to obtain their purpose. The elective character
^of the parliamentary Knights aroise from the pecu-
liar circumstances of their or4^r and the ancient
juridical customs of their shires. But these cir-
cumstances bore no relation to the parliamentary
burgesses^ and although^ honoris causa, they
were incorporated with the noble Commons of
the i:ealm9 the uiachinery of their selection was
far less nice and complicated. In general these re-
turns were ma^e ,by the small governing body
which must exist in all mural communities, whe^
ther incorporated or not; probably in corpo-
jr^tipns the aldcirm^n or capital burgesses served
by rotation. Sometimes, when no leading mem-
ber of the society could be induced to undergo
the inconvenience of quitting his home and neg-
lecting his affairs, a neighbouring squire was
substituted : sometimes the return was at onc^
mjade by the sheriff from his knowledge of l^he
leading personages of the borough ; spmetime^
the future members were recommended by the
privy council ; sometin^es the same repr^en-
tatives at qnce returned to a pew Parliamei^t

H

98

without any intervening ceremony, who had been
seated in the last. The towns in royal demesne
were probably always represented by officers of
the crown, and indeed this class of individuals
abounded in the Tudor Parliaments. If this
loose practice of borough representation were
occasionally in turbulent or careless times drawn
into a dangerous precedent for the return of
Knights for shires without the due and legal con-
vocation of the county court, it is certain that
eventually the more formal and comprehensive
scheme of county representation exercised a far
more decided influence on that of the boroughs.
As these increased in population and intelli-
gence, and the privilege of being represented in
the royal council became to be more generally
understood and more finely appreciated, the
system of representation by election, always more
or less maintained by the return of the Knights,
afforded, as the origin of institutions became
darker, at the same time a precedent for those
inhabitants who sought a participation in the
now envied privilege, and a plan by which their
wishes might be accomplished. Thus the free-

ij

99

holders ia boroughs by the right of their burgage
tenure, the freemen of the corporations, and
sometimes the inhabitants at large, where bur-
gage tenure was rare, and the towns, though
flourishing, had not been incorporated, gradually
established their right to the exercise of a suf-
frage, and thus in the course of time, the House
of Commons came to consist of county members
elected by the freeholders j representatives of
cities and boroughs chosen by a popular consti-
tuency where a popular constituency existed ;
and representatives of the same class who re-
tained the old exemption from election, because,
in fact, the unimportant places for which they
appeared in Parliament had never emerged from
their original insignificance, or produced a popu-
lation bold and flourishing enough to usurp the
return of their representatives from the hands of
the governing body. /

This I believe to be a very just, as I am sure
it is a very impartial, view of the formation of our
House of Commons ; and if the history of our
country and our constitution had ever been any-
thing better than a turbulent theatre for the gla-

100

diatorial struggle of party writers, it is one, I
believe, which long ere this would have been
adopted : for it has the merit of being not only
consistent with human nature and consonant
with that profounder knowledge of the origin of
our political institutions which is the privilege of
the present day, but it reconciles all the charac^
teristicR and all the difficulties which have been
proved and promulgated by the four great the-
ories of borough representation, that have sp
long ^puzzled our lawyers and perplexed our an-
tiquai'ies.

Those who -may imagine that I derive any
satisfaction in establishing the narrow origin of
our present more ipopular representation, greatly
mistake my feelings and opinions. I am not
one of those who believe that the safety of the
Constitution is consulted by encouraging an ex-
clusive principle in the formation of the consti-
tuency of our third ^tate. It is ! not the sup-
posed democratic character which it has assumed
und^r the new arrangement — I wish I could
call it settlement — that fills me with any appre-
hlBusions. On the contrary, I wish it were even

101

more eatbqUc, though certainly not qiore Pi^pist.
It is its sectarian q^alit7 in which I discover just
cause of alarm. But \t has been necessary for
me to show whs^t was the original character of
our Lower House, and the primary intention of
the fdunders of our constitution. In cres^ting a
third estate of the realm, they established ^n
order of men, limited in number and highly pri-
vileged, styled the Commons. Although we
have increased the number of these Comipons,
we have not increased their privileges, or en-
larged their political capacity. They still re-
main an estate of t\xe redlm, and only W estate
of the realm ; in spirit as well as in law. Fpr
although their representatives may be chpsen by
three hundred thousand men instead of one
hundred thousand, they are still only the repre-
sentatives of £^ liipited and favoured class pf tbie
kingdom. The House of Commons is npt a
jot more the Hou^e of the People, unless we ex-
clude from our definition of the people many of
the most essential and most important elements
of a nation. I shall bav^ occasion, in due se<qi-
son, to speak further of the great reforming

102

scheme of 1830. Here I will only observe, that
in a hasty and factious effort to get rid of repre-
sentation without election, it will be as well if
eventually we do not discover, that we have
only obtained election without representation.

The current of these observations reminds me
of an anecdote which may perhaps amuse your
Lordship, nor be found altogether devoid of in-
struction. When I was in Egypt, the pacha of
that country, a personage^ as is well known, of
rare capacity, and influenced by an almost mor-
bid desire of achieving in an instant the great
and gradual results of European civilisation,
was extremely desirous, among other objects of
passion or of fancy, of obtaining a Parliament.
Emulous of the prosperity and popular power
of our Kings, his Highness was eager to obtain
the means by which, on reflection, he was con-
vinced not only that our country so eminently
flourished, but by which our Sovereign suc-
ceeded in commanding at the same time obedi-
ence and affection. It so happened, that a young
English gentleman, who was on his travels, was
at this period resident in Cairo, and as he had

103

more than once had the good fortune in an audi-
ence of engaging the attention of the pacha by
the readiness or patience of his replies, his
Highness determined to do the young English-
man the honour of consulting him.

Our countryman received the summons, which
all instantly obey, and immediately repaired to
the Divan of the citadel. He found the pacha
surrounded by his courtiers, his engineers, his co-
lonels, and his eunuchs. At length his Highness
clapped his hands and the chamber was cleared,
with the exception of a favourite minister and a
faithful dragoman. The surprise of our coun-
tryman, when he received the communication of
the pacha, was not inconsiderable ; but he was
one of those, who had seen sufficient of the
world never to be astonished, not altogether
untinctured with political knowledge, and gifted
with that philosophical exemption from preju-
dice, which is one of the most certain and the
most valuable results of extensive travel. Our
countryman communicated to the Egyptian ruler
with calmness and with precision the immediate
difficulties that occurred to him, explained to

1(H

the successor of the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies
that the political institutions of England had
been the gradual growth of ages, and that there
is no political function which demands a finer
discipline, or a more regulated preparation, than
the exercise of popular suffrage. The pacha
listened in silence, nodding his head in occa-
sional approbation : then calling for coffee, in-
stead of looking at his watch like an European
sovereign, delicately terminated the interview.

Some short time afterwards the young Eng-
lishman repaired, as was his occasional custom,
to the levee of the Egyptian ruler. When the
pacha perceived him, he welcomed him with a
favouring smile, and beckoned to him to advance
to the contiguous divan.

*^ God is great!" said Mehemet Ali to the
traveller ; " you are a wise man — Allah I kerim,
but you spit pearls. Nevertheless I will have a
parliament, and I will have as many parliaments
as the King of England himself. See here!"
So saying, his Highness produced two lists of
names, containing those of the most wealthy
and influential personi^es of every town and

105

district in bis dominions. ^' See here I" said he,
'^ here are my parliaments ; but I hare made up
my mindy to prevent inconvenience, to elect
them myself."

Behold, my Lord, a splendid instance of re-
presentation without election I In pursuance of
this resolution of Mehemet Ali, two chambers
met at Cairo : called in the jargon of the Levant,
the alto ParliamentOj and the basso Parliamento.
The first consisted of the pachas and chief offi-
cers of the capital : the second really of the
most respectable of the provincial population.
Who can doubt that the ha^so Parliamento of
Cairo, if the invasion of Syria had not diverted
the attention of Mehemet Ali from domestic
politics, might have proved a very faithful
and efficient national council, and afforded the
governor of the country very important inform-
ation as to the resources, necessities, and grie-
vances of his subjects? Who can hesitate in
believing that there was a much greater chance
of its efficiency and duration when appointed by
the pacha himself, than when elected by his sub-
jects in their present condition ? Who does iK>t

106

recognise in such an assembly the healthy seeds
of a popular government ? I for one should
have much more confidence in the utility and
duration of the Parliament of Cairo, than in
that of Naples or Madrid y especially as, it is but
candid to confess, Mehemet AH had further se-
cured a practical term of political initiation for
his future legislators by two capital rules j first,
that the basso Parliamento should only petition
and not debate j and secondly, that the alto Par-
liamento should only debate, and not vote t

The Protestant Reformation, which, in a poli-
tical point of view, had only succeeded in di-
viding England into two parties, and establish-
ing arbitrary power, had produced far different
effects on the continent of Europe. There it
had created a Republican religion : for such was
the ecclesiastical polity of Calvin. The English
Protestants, who, flying from the Marian perse-
cution, sought refuge at Geneva, in the agony
of their outraged loyalty, renounced their old
allegiance, applied to civil polity the religious
discipline of their great apostle, and returned to
their native country political republicans. Kings

107

were the enemies of Protestantism, and Protes-
tants naturally became the enemies of monarchy.
The Hebrew history which they studied, as in-
tently as the Christian gospels, furnished them
with a precedent and a model for a religious
republic. Judges ruled in Israel before the royal
dynasties of Saul or David. The anti-monar-
chical spirit of Protestant Europe was notorious
and incontestable as early as the middle of the
sixteenth century. The regicides of Holy Writ
are the heroes of the turbulent tractates of the
early missionaries of spiritual democracy : the
slayer of Sisera, or he who stabbed the fat king
of Moab in his chamber. Samuel, the prophet
of the Lord, deposed kings : Calvin and Knox
were the successors of Samuel. The bloody
massacre of Saint Bartholomew, occasioned by
the promulgation of this dangerous political reli-
gionism, aggravated the danger and determina-
tion of its votaries. The press of Europe
swarmed with republican treatises, composed
by the ablest writers. Books are great land-
marks in the history of human nature. Now
was heard, for the first time, of the paramount

108

authority of " the people." This is the era of
the introduction into European politics of that
insidious phrase, by virtue of which an active
and unprincipled minority have ever since sought
to rule and hoodwink a nation* In ld79» &p*
peared the famous " Vindicias contra Tyrannos*'
of Langueti and the revolt of Holland and the
league of Utrecht, which terminated in the
establishment of the Dutch Republic, formed a
practical commentary on its virulent and fervent
pages.

The Republican Religion, which revolution-
ised Holland, triumphed in Scotland under
Knox, and in France long balanced the united
influence of the crown and the tiara. Even as
late as 16S1, the genius of Richelieu alone pre-
vented France from being formed into a Federal
Republic, and from being divided into circles.

Such was the spirit of the European move-
ment when the aristocracy of England, refreshed
and renovated by more than half a century of
prosperity and peace, deemed the accession of
Charles the First a fitting season for a struggle
to restore the ancient liberties of the nation, and

109

to regain and complete the constitution of the
Plantagenets. For nearly tw^o centuries that
constitution had been suspended^ like an old
suit of armour, crusted with the blood of the
civil wars, and covered with the dust of theot
logic logomachies : but the great spirits of the
seventeenth century recognised the suit as of
good proof, and though somewhat antiquated in
its style and fashion, possessing all necessary
pawers of protection and offence. The history
of the age of Charles the First has been the lite-
rary arena of the passions of all parties. The
iar Taster range of political experience, which
from the great French Revolution and its con-
sequences, we enjoy than our forefathers, our
increased, yet not too considerable, distance from
the passionate period in question, and our de-
creased dependance upon its incidents as the
once solitary precedents for all popular move-
ments, the researches of ingenious ^holars, and
the publication of contemporary memoirs, have
all combined to render us more competent to
decide upon the character of the most memorable
transactions of our annak.

110

Until the meeting of the Long Parliament,
the king appears to have had no party in the
nation, and solely to have depended upon his
courtiers and his bishops. There was a general
feeling throughout the leading classes of the
country, that the time had arrived when the
settlement of the state on a broad basis of con-
stitutional liberty was indispensable. The aris-
tocracy of England also was no longer that un-
lettered class of mere warriors, who, however
great might be their political power, or ardent
their love of public liberty, were necessarily de-
barred, by their habits and want of education,
from practising the arts of government and le-
gislation. The cultivated intellect of England
required a theatre for its display and exercise ;
it found this in some degree in its Parliament,
but sought it more decidedly in the administra-
tion of the empire. The time had arrived when
a prelate could no longer conduct the affairs of
the realm from his monopoly of learning. The
age of royal favourites was about to be closed for
ever. The monarch, though apparently almost
a despot, was fast approaching the simplicity of

Ill

his executive capacity : it not only might be then
obvious to the contemplative, but it was abso-
lutely determined by practical men, that the ad-
ministration of the kingdom should soon be con-
ducted by those of the subjects who were most
eminent and distinguished in the great national
council.

The two Houses of the first Parliament, sum-
moned by Charles, contained the flower of his
kingdom — men of the highest lineage, the largest
estates, the most distinguished learning, and the
most illustrious accomplishments. The opposi-
tion in the House of Commons, led by Eliot,

«

and supported by the Peers, succeeded, as early
as the third year of Charles's reign, in obtaining
the Petition of Right. But this concession did
not satisfy the Parliament ; they wished to dis-
lodge the favourite; to change the ministry. as
well as establish the Constitution. Charles re-
coiled from the novel heresy of not being the
master of his own servant, a heresy soon doomed
to become orthodox : he determined to Eupport
his friend, and the King resolved to reign with-
out a Parliament.

112

It is singular that the King could liave con-
triyed to reign teu years without one, but the
truth isy the state of the country, as is admitted
and celebrated by all foreign writejrs, was of a
prosperity so extraordinary, that it was difficult
to excite discontents among the great body of
the nation. In this dilemma, the leaders of the
Opposition among the Commons, Hampden and
Pyn), but concealing their masterly machina-
tions from the more numerous and moderate
portion of their party, intrigued with the Scotch,
and held out to the Presbyterian leaders of that
nation the prospect of the English Opposition
assisting them in their favourite project, the
overthrow of the Church of England in Scot-
land. The consequent troubles in 3Qotland
plunged the King in a war, and was the occasion
of the summons of the Long Parliament

The spirit of the King, when he met this fa-
mous assembly, was quite broken. He was ready
to make any concession consistent with the main-
tenance of a limited monarchy- Experience had
tAUght him that the whole body of the aristocracy
was opposed to him, and we know that Charles

lis

WAS perfectly aware of the sacrifices which would
be demanded of him, and which he was prepared
to grant without resistance. The objects of the
king at this time were to obtain the establishment
of a limited monarchy by constitutional conces-
sions, and then to form a parliamentary admi-
nistration from the most eminent of his previous
opponents, in which conduct alone he recognised
any security for a strong government, and the
only prevention of further movement.

The Long Parliament in a few months restored
the constitution of the Plantagenets. It secured
the frequent assemblage of Parliaments : it termi-
nated for ever arbitrary taxation : it abolished the
Star Chamber and the High Commission Court.
The concessions of Charles the First during the
two sessions of this Parliament, previous to the
civil war, were so ample that the revolution of
1688 added no important feature to our political
system. Faithful to their purpose, the leaders of
this famous opposition, not only established our
liberties, but impeached the ministers, and this
brought about a result not less anxiously and
eagerly sought after than the abolition of Ship

114

Money : a formal attempt by the King, for which
he had been long prepared, to form a govern-
ment of the more moderate portion of the par-
liamentary party. I cannot believe that the
death of the Earl of Bedford could alone have
occasioned the failure of this intended arrange-
ment: it is more probable that the dissensions
which soon broke out in the great body of the
Commons had already covertly appeared. The
Parliament, although both Houses, and the vast
majority of the Lower, had been previously op-
posed to the King, for we must not forget that
even Hyde and Falkland were originally mem-
bers of opposition, had now become divided into
two parties, the Constitutional Reformers, and
the Root and Branch Reformers : Pym and
Hampden headed the latter. The Constitutional
Reformers were alarmed by the attack on the
Church : the Lords threw out the Bill which
sought to deprive the Bishops of their Parlia?
mentary suffrage. This was the first check that
the Commons had received from the Upper
House. Pym and Hampden, deserted by the
Constitutional Reformers, had thrown themselves

115

into the hands of the Puritans^Root and Branch
men. Instead of political unions, they appealed
to the city apprentices, and the trained bands ;
mobs were hired, petitions forged, all the arts of
insurgency practised. The Peers were daunted,
thie King frightened ; Strafford was executed, the
Bishops expelled the House of Lords, the House
of Commons itself rendered independent of the
King and its constituents by the act which made
its dissolution consequent on its own pleasure.
At length, by the Remonstrance and the Proposi-
tions, the very abrogation of the monarchy being
attempted, the king raised his standard, and so
completely had the unhappy monarch by his
conduct placed the Commons in the wrong, that
the very personage who, two years before, had
absolutely no party in the nation, found himself
supported by a considerable majority of his
people, and nearly the whole of the Peerage,
while the vote which virtually occasioned the
struggle, and was the trial of strength of the
two parties in the House of Commons, was only
carried by a majority of eleven. The success
of the royal arms, and the unexpected strength

I 2

116

of the royal party, filled the Commons with con-
sternation. The moderate members continued
to flock to the King. Pym and Hampden, find-
ing that they were deserted by their aristocratic
companions, and that the Puritans and Root
and Branch men were not powerful enough to
support them, made an open and absolute alli-
ance with the Scotch presbyterians, with whom
they had always had a secret understanding,
swallowed the Covenant which they had before
disfavoured, decreed the extermination of the
Church of England, beheaded Laud^ called in a
Scotch army, and maintained their cause by a
connexion oflFensive to their countrymen.

Am I indeed treating of the reign of Charles
the First ? or is it some nearer epoch that I am
commemorating ? Am I writing of the afiairs of
the seventeenth or the nineteenth century ? There
is such a marvellous similarity between the pe*
riods, that, for my part, I find great difficulty in
discriminating between the two Dromios. In
both instances the Church of England is the
great victim, and at both seasons the vast ma-
jority of the English people were warmly and

(

1

117

tenderly attached to their establishment. In
both cases the aristocratic leaders of the move-
ment, thought fit to secede from their own
party, while in both cases their more deter-
mined or desperate associates compensate them-
selves for the desertion by the alliance of revo-
lutionary or anti-national support. In one in-
stance the Radicals, in the other the Root and
Branch men ; in one instance the Dissenters, in
the other the Puritans. And in both instances,
when Radicals and Dissenters in the one case,
and Puritans and Root and Branch men in the
other, fail in making up with their influence for
the loss of the aristocratic connexions of the
leaders who had summoned them, we find the
same desperate and treasonable compact, made
in one age with the Scotch Presbyterians, and in
the other, with the Irish Papists; the solemn
league and covenant so long repudiated, swal-
lowed as the condition in the first instance, and
the Irish Church scheme, once so wdl*mly op-
posed, gulped down in the other. ^
The Bishops expelled from the House of
Lords, the King defied, then imprisoned, and

Its

then decapitated, the House of Lords disre*
garded^ and then formally abolished^ voted ** a
nuisance, and of no use " — you see, my Lord,
there were Utilitarians even in those days, — be-
hold the great object at length consummated of
concentrating the whole power and authority of
the government in one estate of the r-ealm. The
verbal process by which the revolution was ef-
fected, was very simple and very logical, if we
only grant the premises; the schoolmen « them-
selves could not have reasoned with more in-
vincible accuracy. The IJouse of Commons
having first declared **that the people are the
origin of all just power," an axiom to which any
person may annex any meaning of his fancy ;
ne^t enunciated that the House of Commons
being chosen by the people and representing
them, are the supreme authority of the nation,
and that consequently whatever is declared to be
law by the House of Commons, hath the fprce
of law without the consent of the Kjng or the
House of Peers. First, the constituency of the
House of Commons,^ a small fraction of the
natioti, is declared to be the People j their

119

power then becomes invested in their represent
tatives.; the majority of those representatives
acting by their supreme authority, then expel
from their numbers the minority, who oppose
their projects ; and then, still acting by their
supreme authority, vote the power of the tri-
umphant majority perpetual. This is the simple
process by which we at length obtain a tolerably
definite idea of what is meant* by the phrase
'*the People," and the easy machinery by which
a band of two or three hundred individuals
obtain and exercise despotic power over the
lives, liberties, and property of a whole nation.

We still remember in this country the tender
and happy consequences of being governed by
"the People.*' We have not forgotten that
" the People '* established Courts more infamous
than the Star Chamber in every county of Eng«
land, with power of fining, sequestrating, impri-
soning, and corporally punishing all who op-
posed, or even murmured against their decrees ;
that under the plea of malignancy " the People"
avenged their private hatreds, and seized for
their private gain and gratification any estates or

120

property to which they took a fancy ; that ^* the
People'^ consigned to Bastilles and perpetual im-
prisonment all those who refused to answer
their illegal inquiries, and bored red-hot irons
through the tongues of the contumacious ; that
not an appearance of law or liberty remained in
the land ; that ** the People" enlarged the laws
of high treason, so that they comprehended
verbal offences^ and even intentions i that ** the
People" practised decimation ; that " the Peo-
ple '* voted trial by Jury a breach of parliamen-
tary privilege ; that " the People'' deprived of
authority all persons of family and distinction
who had originally adhered to their party, be-
cause men of blood and breeding would not sub-
mit to be their disgraceful and ignoble tools, and
filled every office under them with the scum of
the nation ; that the very individuals who had
suffered and struggled under the Star Chamber
were visited by ^* the People" with punishments
and imprisonments infinitely more bloody and
more grievous ; that " the People*' sequestrated
nearly one half of the goods and chattels of the
nation, and at least one-half of its rents and re-

121

venues; that in seven years " the People'' raised
the taxation of the country from eight hundred
thousand pounds per annum, to seven millions
per annum ; that " the People" invented the Ex-
cise, and applied that odious impost even to pro-
visions and the common necessaries of life ; that
" the People*' became so barefaced in their vile
extortions, that one morning they openly divided
three hundred thousand pounds amongst them-
selves, and settled an annuity of four pounds a
day on each of their number ; that " the People"
committed all these enormities in the teeth of
outraged England, by the aid of an anti-national
compact with the Scottish Covenanters ; and that,
finally, the Nation, the insulted and exhausted
Nation, sought refuge from the government of
" the People*' in the arms of a military despot.

1 hear much in the present day of the march
of intellect^ and the diffusion of knowledge, and
the influence of public opinion, and there are
those who would assure us that in these circum-
stances and qualities^ we may safely count upon
finding ample guarantees for, not only the main-
tenance, but the increase of our liberties, and

w

122

very able securities for every species of good go-
vernment. It will be as well for us, however,
to turn aside, if possible, for a moment from the
exciting tumult in which it is the destiny of the
present age to flourish, and calmly condescend to
spare a few moments of consideration to the
history of that not less agitated and consequential
age, which elapsed, from 1550 to the middle of
the seventeenth century. The Protestant Refor-
mation, and its great political consequences, es-
pecially the formation of the Dutch Republic,
had agitated men's minds in a degree not inferior
to the influence exercised over the spirit of the
eighteenth and present centuries by the French
Revolution. The nature and origin of Power
were not less severely scrutinized \ the object
and influence of Establishments not less sharply
canvassed. There was as much pnblic intelli-
gence, as much public opinion, and as much publk
spirit in Europe then, as at the present hour.
The exclusive and local character of nations was
fast disappearing j patriotism was fast merging
into philanthropy ; a cosmopolite spirit pervaded
Christendom : Geneva communics^ed with Edin-

123

burgh or Paints ; there was a constant spiritual
correspondence between Amsterdam and La
Rochelle and London. The political movement
in England originated with the aristocracy; it
was supported and advanced by the great body
of the nation. If the influence of the press were
less considerable than at the present day, though
I much doubt it, and the British Museum, which
contains so many thousand pamphlets of the
times of Charles the First, a fraction only of the
fugitive effusions, confirms my scepticism, — Pub-
lic Opinion had yet another, and more powerful
organ, and was influenced by even a more potent
and passionate medium. If there were ten
thousand pamphlets, certainly there were ten
thousand pulpits. There was as much commu-
nication in 1640 as there is likely to be in 1840}
if we had no rail-roads, we had men who rode
^* post haste ;'' there were as many committees^
there was as complete an organization j the arts
of insurgency reached such a zenith of perfection
that the unlicensed imagination and unbridled
devices of Jacobinical France only imitated, and
never surpassed them i and more important

124

than all, the Government was much weaker.
Yet, although the flame of popular liberty was
fed by such various and vigorous fuel, and al-
though the ranks pf the popular party were
marshalled, and led on during the contest by
statesmen inferior in station, capacity, and ac-
complishment, to none who ever figured in this
land, the mighty impulse, like the most beautiful
river of Germany, which, after renovating a
country, and commanding the admiration of a
nation, never reaches the ocean, but sinks into
the swamps of Brabant, the mighty impulse
achieved only destruction, and the movement
ended in mud.

The reigns of the latter Stuarts are the most
disgraceful in our annals, but as much from the
character of the nation, as the character of those
monarchs. The public spirit was broken, and
the public mind corrupted. Good laws are of
little avail without good manners, and unless
there be a wholesome state of mind in the nation
to regulate their exercise. Trial by Jury in the
time of Charles the Second was a tyranny as
fearful as the Star Chamber ; and without any

125

formal violation of our written constitution, it is
probable that the government of the Tudors
would have been re-established in England, had
not James the Second alarmed the Protestant
spirit of the country, and the aristocracy seized
the opportunity of again establishing our li-
berties.

The consequences of the famous revolution
which raised the Prince of Orange to the throne
of these realms were very important, but as they
did not affect the form or elements of the House
of Commons, the remarks which it may be neces-
sary to make upon that event will more na-
turally occur to me when I come to consider the
nature of the executive branch of our Constitu-
tion, and the character of the kingly office.
The history of England from that period
until 1830, is rather political than constitu-
tional, and although extremely interesting to a
statesman, relates to the struggles of rival
parties for power instead of the more inspiring
contest between royal prerogative and parliamen-
tary privilege, and that more noble conflict for
their liberties between a nation and a sovereign.

'I'

126

The struggles of parties also, as connected with
ministerial responsibility, are naturally linked
with the yet untouched topic of the Crown.

Viewing the Reform Bill of 18i(0, as the cowp
d?Hat of a party, who haying obtained power,
found themselves opposed by all the states of
the realm, and supposing that their only object
was to establish themselves in power by conced-
ing a preponderating influence in the consti-
tuency to a sectarian minority in the State
favourable to their views and policy, the intend-
ed measure is very intelligible ; but dismissing
for the moment from our consideration all
factious imputations, it must be admitted that
this reform was conceived and prosecuted in a
profound ignorance of the nature of our con-
stitution, to which we may ascribe all the mis-
chiefs that have occurred, and that threaten us.
/ That the re-construction of the third estate of
the realm was necessary, is an intelligible propo-
sition ; and had it been proved, all that we had to
consider was the mode by which it should be at-
tained. But the Whigs set out with reforming
the representatives of the estate, instead of the

127

estate itself, and the consequences of this capital
blunder pervade the whole of their arrange-
ment. If the proposition of the necessity had
been proved, then we had to consider the prin-
ciple on which the Reform should be conducted,
as population, fiscal contribution, or peculiar
class. But hj reforming the representatives in-
stead of the estate, no principle could be adopt-
ed, or at least could only partially be applied.
Hence the present system is as anomalous as the
late one : communities of two or three hundred
electors return as many representatives as com-
munities of fourteen thousand ; a man who rents
a ten pound house in a town enjoys a suffrage,
a man who lives in a forty pound house out of a
town is not an elector^ It might be undeniable,
that if the third estate were to be reformed, the
principle of representation without election no
longer suited the present state of society : but
why then cling to that part of the ancient
scheme which gave a preponderating influence
in numbers to the citizens and burgesses because,
in fact, they were not elected, but only nomi-
nated ? All this originated in the fallacy of sup-

128

posing that the state of our representation in
many towns was the consequence of decay, in-
stead of original intention. Thus whole and
important districts of the country, and consider-
able classes of the community, are not repre-
sented, and the land which originally formed the
third estate, assumes only a secondary character
in its present elements. /

Nevertheless, constituted as the third estate
now is, and changed as may be its elements, has
it in a political capacity, deviated from its ori-
ginal character ? The Commons form still only
an estate of the realm, a privileged and limited
order of the nation, in numbers a fraction of
the mass, and their representatives can only be
invested with the qualities of their constituents.
To maintain that an estate of the realm is the
People, involves a contradiction in terms, for an
estate implies a class of the people. The Com-
mons of England are not the People, unless we
declare that every person who is not a par-
liamentary constituent, is without the pale of
national definition. If we agree to this, the
people of England consists of three or four hun-

129

dred thousand persons, divided into almost equal
classes professing the most contrary opinions.
The absurdity of such a conclusion is evident.
The House of Commons is not the House of the
People, and the members of the House of Com-
mons are not the representatives of the People.

I proceed to consider the constitution and
the character of the Upper House of Parliament.
The House of Lords is the most eminent existing
example of representation without election. As
an estate of the realm which^ from its limited
numbers, can with convenience personally ap-
pear and assemble, the Peers of England do not
meet at Westminster by their trustees, or depu-
ties, or delegates. But this House is neverthe-
less representative. The House of Lords re-
presents the Church in the Lord Bishops^ the
law in the Lord Chancellor, and often the
Lord Chief Justice, the counties in the Lord
Lieutenants, the boroughs in their noble Re-
corders. This estate from the character of the
property of its members, is also essentially the
representative chamber of the land ; and as the
hereditary leaders of the nation, especially of the

K

130

cultivators of the land, the genuine and perma-
nent population of England, its peasantry.

In ruder times, when the King desired to call
a great council, which should represent the
interests and consult over the welfare of his
kingdom, he summoned the barons or chief sub-
jects of his realm. These great councils, which
were the origin of our Parliaments, and so styled
before they assumed a legislative character, as-
sembled for the administration of justice. They
formed a high court of law whither in time re-
paired, as I have before described, deputations
of the provincial tribunals, and the local exe-
cutors of the law. The Barons originally held
their parliamentary privilege by tenure, but the
King soon mingled among them by his writ of
summons such individuals as he deemed fit and
competent to assist them in their great office.
Such was the origin of baronies by writ ; and
peerages by patent were also introduced as early
as the reign of Richard the Second. Gradually,
as the country advanced in civilisation, and the
affairs of its population became more compli-
cated, the Sovereign delegated portions of his

131

judicial power to appointed and permanent tri-
bunals of his palace, presided over by his selected
councillors, and in time by professional lawyers.
Such was the origin of our great courts of law ;
of King 8 Bench, of Common Pleas, and of Ex-
chequer ; but the House of Lords, even when
the formal and present constitution of Parlia-
ment occurred, still retained, independent of the
legislative functions of their estate, their original
character of a high court of justice, which has
descended to their successors, who to this day
form the supreme and efficient court of appeal of
the kingdom. It was this character, indeed,
which rendered, in old days, the intermission of
Parliaments so great a grievance. By not as-
sembling the House of Lords, justice was de-
layed, and when we read in the reigns of the
Plantagenets of the murmurs of the nation
at the King not calling his Parliament, it was,
in fact, the meeting of the Peers which the
nation invoked with such loud complaintsy^

The House of Lords strictly consists of two
estates of the realm; the Lords Spiritual and

Temporal. Originally, the Lords Spiritual ex-

K 2

132

ceeded the Temporal Peers in number. In the
last Parliament that was held before the strug- '
gles between the houses of York and Lancaster,
so fatal to our ancient Peerage, only fifty- three
Temporal Lords appeared in Parliament : the
Spiritual Lords, on the other hand, numbered
twenty-one Bishops, and thirty-six mitred Ab-
bots and Priors. Henry the Seventh could only
summon to his first Parliament twenty-nine tem-
poral Lords, and even in the reign of Henry the
Eighih, the temporal Peers did not equal the re-
presentatives of the Church and the great eccle-
siastical corporations. The dissolution of the
monasteries, which expelled the mitred Abbots
and Priors from the Upper House, reduced the
number of the spiritual Peers to twenty-six, five
new bishoprics having Jbeen created as a species of
representative compensation to the new Church.
From this period the political influence of the
Lords Spiritual in the Upper House has never
been of a preponderating character, and although
they retained their ancient privilege as a sepa-
rate estate, and the precedence to which they
were originally entitled, they have in fact, by

I

i

133

blending their votes with their temporal brethren,
contributed to the formation of one estate of the
realm, in which they have long virtually, although
not formally, merged.

I think, my Lord, this is not an inconvenient
opportunity of considering the policy of the pre-
sence of these right reverend personages in the
Upper House of Parliament, a policy so unpo-
pular with the anti-constitutional party of this
country. Whenever the factious leaders of the
third estate attempt to obtain a preponderating
influence in the constitution for the House in
which they sit as representatives of their order^
and to usurp the entire government of the
country, and exercise despotic control over the
lives and liberties, the persons and properties of
their fellow-subjects, the attack upon the inde-
pendence and influence of the House of Lords
is invariably commenced by an assault upon the
ecclesiastical elements of its composition. Thus
in the time of Charles the First, the factious
leaders of a majority of the representatives of that
limited and privileged order of the nation, called
the Commons, succeeded, after repeated efforts.

134

in expelling the Bishops, or first estate, from
the Upper House ; and thus certain persons
at the present day, who inherit all the fac-
tion of Pym and Hampden, though none of their
genius, being as like to them as Butler's Hudibras
is like to Milton's Satan, have, in a manner at
once indecent and unconstitutional, and which,
if I have any knowledge of the laws of my coun-
try, subjects them to a praemunire — soiled the
notice book of the proceedings of the next ses-
sion of the House of Commons with a vile and
vulgar menace of this exalted order.

The great art in creating an efficient Repre-
sentative Government is, to secure its represen-
tation of those interests of the country which are
at the same time not only considerable, but in
their nature permanent. To bind up with our
form of polity the feelings of vast and influential
classes of the nation, obviously tends to the per*
petuity of the State ; though the danger of
making sudden and slightly considered additions
to the elements of our political estates need not
be enlarged upon, nor the fatal blunder of mis-
taking an evanescent for a permanent interest.

135

Independent of all those spiritual considerations,
which hitherto have been held as justljr and
wisely influencing the elements and character of
the English constitution ; dismissing for a mo-
ment from our thoughts that union of Church
and State which hitherto has consecrated the
commonwealth of England ; granting for an in-
stant, that that religious connexion, which has
so long tempered power, and so often elevated
its exercise, should indeed cease, and that the
authority of the Church of England should only
be supported by the affections and voluntary suc-
cour of its votaries ; I have yet to learn that the
presence in the House of Peers, of an order of
individuals, who, in the independence of their
means, I may say the vastness of their posses-
sions, are inferior to none, can be enumerated
among the less desirable elements of a Senate.
To me it seems that a Bishop of Durham, or of
Winchester, affords, from his position, the pro-
bable materials of as efficient a member of the
Upper House as any Earl or Marquis who bears
those names.
^^ /But when I recall to my recollection the viru-

136

lent antipathy of the anti-constitutional writers
of the present day, against what they style the
Hereditary Peerage, and the unqualified legisla-
tors, whom they pretend must be the inevitable
consequences of its institution, I confess that I
am somewhat astonished that their first and
fiercest attack should be made on that portion of
the House of Lords whose office is not heredi-
tary, who in general spring from the humbler
classes of the community, and who, from the
nature of their qualification to sit in that august
assembly, must necessarily be men distinguished
for their learning, their talents, and their virtues*
Of the many popular elements of the House of
Lords^ I have always considered that the bench
of Bishops was the most democratic. /

I have not concealed my conviction, for I
plead only the cause of Truth, that the Protes-
tant Reformation in England originally tended
to the establishment of arbitrary power, and of
that despotism of the Tudors of which Charles
the First was the victim. The Church trans-
ferred their allegiance from the Tiara to the
Crown J the people followed the example of their

137

national ecclesiastics. But these were the ine-
vitable consequences of unparalleled events.
The Church is part of our Constitution, and its
character has changed in unison with that Con-
stitution ; the clergy in this country, thanks to
that Reformation whose good fruits we have
long enjoyed, both political and spiritual, are na-
tional; they are our fellow-subjects, and they
have changed with their fellow-countrymen.
Their errors were the errors of their age, and
of their nation ; they were no more. The Bishops
who, under James the First, maintained the
High Commission Court, under James the Se-
cond were the first champions of our liberties ;
the Establishment which, under Laud, persecuted
to obtain Conformity, is now certainly our surest,
perhaps our only guarantee of Toleration.

The English Constitution, while it has se«
cured that toleration, absolute and illimitable,
has also consecrated the State; it has proved
that religious government and religious liberty
are not incompatible. It is one of the leading
principles of our polity that the religious disci-
pline and future welfare of our citizens are even

138

of greater importance than their political and
present welUbeing. And although the pious
and private munificence of an ancient people
has, in the course of ages, relieved the State
from the fiscal burthen of a dependent Clergy,
invested that godly, and learned, and devoted
body with a noble and decorous inheritance, and
covered our land with schools and churches, with
sublime temples, and august and unrivalled uni-
versities ; the State has, nevertheless, stepped in
as the trustee and guardian of the ministers of
our religion, adopted them as its children, and
established their order into an estate of the
kingdom.

The Stuarts were prodigal in the creation of
temporal Peers ; one hundred and nineteen met
in the Parliament of 1640, but in I66I the num-
ber had scarcely increased. The Peers of Eng-
land led the movement against the unhappy son
of James the First. A Peer was one of the five
members whom the King attempted to seize ;
but when all those concessions were obtained
from the Sovereign, which would have left the
estates, and the nation at large, in the possession

k

139

of even greater privileges than we enjoy at this
day ; when it was discovered that the monarchy
itself was aimed at, and that Reform was fast ap-
proaching Revolution, the great body of the
Peerage, in- unison with the great body of their
fellow-subjects, withdrew themselves from the
Parliament and adhered to the King. So that
when the Upper House was formally abolished
by the vote of the House of Commons, the cus-
tomary attendance of Lords was not more than
six or eight. Little more than a quarter of a
century after the restoration of the Stuarts, the
nation, headed by the Peers, expelled them, and
established the security of a Protestant throne.

From the accession of William the Third, to
the accession of William the Fourth, a period of
upwards of one hundred and forty years, the
House of Lords has not only exercised an inde-
pendent, but a considerable, and, as some have
held, a preponderating influence, in the govern-
ment of the country. The Whigs, under George
the First, in pursuance of their plan of reducing
the English monarch to the character of a Vene-
tian Doge, succeeded in carrying a bill through

140

the Upper House to deprive the King of his
prerogative of creating further Peers, and thus
to convert the free and democratic Peerage of
England into an odious oligarchy of exclusive
privilege ; but the House of Commons, led by
the Tory country gentlemen, rejected the propo-
sition with becoming decision. Since that time,
and especially during the active reigns of the
Third and Fourth Georges, the royal preroga-
tive has been exercised with a liberality, which,
by some has been warmly, but I think unwisely,
stigmatized. Thie ranks of our second estate
have been periodically strengthened by an acces-
sion of some of the best blood, the greatest
wealth, and the most distinguished talent of the
community, and its due influence alike in the
legislature, and in national opinion, has thus
been efficiently maintained.

The increased strength of the third estate, in
consequence of its recent reconstruction, having
filled the imaginations of certain factious leaders
with the old and disastrous machination of esta-
blishing the supremacy of its representative
chamber, and that result not being possible un-

141

less the independence of the Upper House of
Parliament is first destroyed, an attack is now
made with equal violence and perseverance upon
the hereditary principle of its institution, as pro-
ductive of irresponsibility, and thus affording,
not only a most injurious, but an anomalous,
feature in the scheme of our legislative and ex-
ecutive government.

Who has not heard of the fatal and anomalous
irresponsibility of the House of Lords ? Of what
Whig Journal does it not form the subject of
the choice and cockbrained leading article ? Is
there a tavern Cleon, from whose foaming lips
its anathema does not flow in rabid sentences of
seditious folly ? Is there a plebeian oracle of a
metropolitan vestry, who does not warn the
Peers of England with the solemn stolidity of
his Delphic utterance? Nay, the authorized
agitator of the administration itself, is sent upon
a. provincial tour of treason to open the minds
of the King's lieges on this urgent point of con-
stitutional revelation — the vagabond and over-
rated rebel — vomiting his infamous insolence in
language mean as his own soul I

142

And yet this fatal and anomalous irresponsi-
bility is no more the characteristic of the House
of Lords^ than of that third estate itself/ in whose
supremacy the anti-constitutional writers teach
us we are alone to find a security for good
government.
/ /The estate of the Peers is in no greater de-
gree irresponsible than the estate of the Com-
mons. Both are alike popular classes, that is,
sections of the nation, established for the public
and common good, into political orders or
estates. For this reason are they privileged,
and for no other ; nor is there any privilege of
importance which the Lords enjoy which the
Commons do not share ; though there are very
many, and those too very important privileges,
which the Commons in the course of time have
acquired, and which they have jealously mono-
polized. The Commons, for their own conve-
nience, meet in Parliament by their represen-
tatives ; the Lords, from their limited number,
meet personally. Yet a Peer is, allowed to vote
by proxy on the same principle that the Com-
mons are allowed to vote by their proxies or

143

representatives ; it .ever being the wish and in-
tention, and genius of our Constitution, that the
three estates should be as completely and con-
stantly consulted on all subjects, and their consent
to all laws as perfectly obtained as human wit could
devise. This is the real and original cause of
the Peers voting by proxy, an analogous privi-
lege with that enjoyed by the Commons ; yet in
these days of profound constitutional learning
even this vote by proxy is held " an anomaly,'*
and no less a personage than an exalted member
of the Upper House itself, eager to obtain a little
vulgar popularity by falling in with the superlScial
humours of the day, has been found anxious to
deprive his own order of an ancient and, as I
have shown, not a peculiar privilege.

A political estate is in its nature complete,
and, therefore, whatever may be the amount of
privileges, or the degree of power with which it
is invested, it is necessarily independent. Now
all power that is independent must be irrespon-
sible. If the estate of the Peers be independent
and irresponsible, and undoubtedly and neces-
sarily it is so, to whom is the estate of the

144s

Commons responsible ? To .whom is that priyi-
leged order of the kingdom, who at the last
general election, to the amount of three hundred
thousand men, voted for the representatives of
their order in Parliament, to whom are they re-
sponsible ? What political dependence have they
upon the nation at large ? What do they care
for what the unrepresented mass may think of
their resolves and conduct ? Are they amenable
for their political behaviour to any public tri-
bunal ? Have they not, if they agree among
themselves and return their representatives to
that effect, the power, as far as the assent of
their estate is concerned, the power to deprive
all those who are not of their privileged order of
their rights and liberties? What lawyer can
doubt such a right in the Commons, or dispute
their power, if they choose to exercise it ? Have
not the majority of their representatives, in fact,
often exercised the delegated power of their
order to this effect ? Why has the House of
Commons often been unpopular with the great
body of the nation ? Because their conduct op*
posed its interests or inclinations. Was the

145

House of Commons dependent on the nation ?
No ! They were dependent on their order, on
their privileged constituents, who sent them to
their chamber, and who, in their turn, are re-
sponsible to no class whatever. If the question
of responsibility be mooted, what satisfaction or
increased security to a nation of many millions
is it, that the privileged order of Commons con-

sists of three hundred thousand, instead of two

ft

hundred thousand, or even one hundred thou-
sand persons? Is a privileged order of three
hundred thousand individuals, represented by
their deputies, likely to be more responsible than
a privileged order of three hundred individuals
appearing by themselves? On the contrary,
every one sees and feels in an instant, that, as
far as the nation is concerned, the more limited
order, who appear for themselves, and are more
in the eye of the world, are in fact in a moral
point of view much more responsible to the
general body of the people, than the more
numerous and more obscure class, who shuffle
oflF that moral responsibility on their represen-
tatives. I

L

146

So much for the anomalous irresponsibility of
the House of Lords. You will perceive, my
Lord, that nothing but the two capital blunders
prevalent among the anti-constitutional writers
of the present day, namely, in the first place
confounding the representatives of an estate
with that estate itself, and secondly, supposing
that their presumed estate was in fact represen-
tative of no less a body than the nation itself,
between whom and the House of Commons
there really exists no privity ; I repeat, nothing
but these two capital blunders in our profound
political instructors, can account for the perverse
absurdities of their lucubrations, or the conceited
complacency with which they develope their ill-
seasoned theories.

If the estate of the Peers be not more irre-
sponsible in the exercise of the power with which
it is invested than the estate of the Commons,
so also the qualification by which the Peers ex-
ercise their power is in its nature the same as
the qualification by which the Commons exer-
cise their power. If the institution of hereditary
legislators be absurd, I do not see that that of

147

hereditary electors is less so. If it be absurd to
enact that a man in the most elevated and cul-
tivated class of the community should be born
with the right of becoming, at a legal age, an
£nglish legislator, so is it equally absurd to
maintain that a man in one of the humbler and
less educated classes of tbe community, should
be born with the right of becoming, at a legal
age, the nominator of a legislator. Yet the
qualification of a majority of the English Com-
mons is hereditary.

So you see, my lord, it turns out on a little
dispassionate examination, that the ^^anomalous'*
institution of the House of Lords is not quite so
irregular, so flagrantly out of rule, so absolutely
alien to the genius of our Constitution, as, were
we to place credit in our profound disquisitionists
and reformers^ we might too hastily imagine.

The Lords, it seems, in a legal point of view,
are not a jot more irresponsible than the other
limited, and privileged, and purely conventional
order of the State ; in a mere moral point of
view, indeed^ are more amenable to the influence
ofpublic opinion than their obscurer rivals ; while

l2

148

the qualification both of the Lords and Commons
is, to a great amount, identical, and the Commons
hold and enjoy their privileges by the very same
odious principle, which frights the orators of the
Crown and Anchor from their propriety, and
stimulates the kennel orators of Westminster and
Marylebone, in the enthusiasm of their rhetoric
slang, to denounce the ^^ absurd and anomalous
authority of the Lords ;*' to wit, that very same,
that odious hereditary principle, which pervades
the whole frame of our society, which has con-
duced more than any other principle to the per-
petuity of our state, and which at the present
day is so greatly abused, and so little under-
stood .

But although the exposition into which I have
entered of the real principles and the genuine
nature of the English Constitution has destroyed
for ever, as far as reason can influence, and truth
prevail, the revolutionary objection which it is
now the fashion to urge against the hereditary
principle of the second estate of this kingdom, I
am far from wishing to avoid the abstract dis-
cussion of the fitting elements of a senate, in

149

which our modern anti-constitutional writers,
the gentlemen who admire abstract principles,
and would build up their political fabric on a
system of mire science, so freely and frequently .
indulgey''^ And therefore I will at once admit,
that if I were called upon to construct a Con-
stitution a priori for this country, of which a
senate, or superior chamber, was to be a con-
stituent part, I am at a loss to conceive where I
could obtain more suitable materials for its con-
struction than in the body of our hereditary
Peerage. So far from considering that there is
any thing absurd or objectionable in the prin-
ciple of political inheritance, as a statesman, who
wished to study the perpetuity of his state, it is
the very principle of which I should eagerly
avail myself, and to which I should cling. As-
suredly I cannot understand how an efficient
senate is to be secured by merely instituting
another elective chamber, the members of which
being the deputies of their constituents, must
either be the echo of the Lower House, or if re-
turned by a different class, the factious delegates
of an envious and hostile section of the commu-

150

nity. Would the difficulty be removed, and the
object obtained, by allowing the members of the
senate to be chosen from the body of the Lower
House itself ? The trial of strength then would
be elevated from the choice of a Speaker, to the
election of a House of Lords. This would in-
deed be a struggle I What a prize for an am-
bitious minister ! What a noble quarry for the
falcon glance of a keen opposition I After the
division, after the high blood excited by such an
encounter, we might, I think, retire to our
homes, and return to our constituents at once,
and leave the victorious party to record their
decrees without the affectation of discussion, and
the mockery of control.

What chance do these wild schemes hold out
of an effective senate? But would you then
cling to your hereditary legislators? Why not?
But the very idea of an hereditary legislator is
absurd ; who ever heard of an hereditary phy-
sician, or an hereditary surgeon, or an hereditary
apothecary ? Such an idea would be absurd ;
therefore the idea of an hereditary legislator is
absurd. Granted, if legislators be apothecaries.

151

Before we can decide whether the idea of an
hereditary legislator be absurd, we must first
ascertain what is meant by the word legislator,
and what are the public duties of this personage,
which we are about to make a matter of inhe-
ritance to his posterity. If by the word legis-
lator, we mean one of those original and orga-
nising minds who occasionally arise to frame
commonwealths, and to mould the minds of na-
tions^ I willingly concede that it would be very
absurd to invest such a character with the ne-
cessary power to fulfil his grand objects, and
simultaneously to entail the enjoyment of the
same power on his posterity : I freely admit,
that it is not very probable that the entailed le-
gislator^ like his sire, would prove either a Moses
or a Minos, a Numa or a Solon, a Saxon Alfred,
or a Russian Peter. But at the same time I am
equally of opinion, that it is just as probable that
the legislative descendant of the great legislator
would rival his powers, as that a Moses or a
Minos, a Numa or a Solon, a Saxon Alfred or a
Czar Peter should be returned to Parliament as
their representative, by any body of ten pound-

ere in the kingdom. Such characters are bo rare
that we do not count upon their force and im-
pulse in arranging the economy of a State. If
the conduct of public affairs depended upon the
constant presence in the commonwealth of such
characters, the State would enjoy no quality of
duration. It seems, therefore, that we must be
content to require from our legislators a some-
what more moderate portion of sagacity and
science. And the question then naturally arises,
what portion ? Whether in fact the qualities of
a legislator in an ancient, and free, and highly
civilized and experienced State, will not be ne-
cessarily found among individuals of average in-
telligence and high education ; and whether an
order of men, who from their vast possessions,
have not only a great, a palpable, and immediate
interest in the welfare of a country, but by ease,
and leisure, and freedom from anxiety, are en-
couras-ed to the humanising pursuits of learning
liberal love of arts ; an order of men
i born honoured, and taught to respect
res by the good fame and glory of their
s ; who from the womb to the grave are

153

trained to loathe and recoil from every thing
that is mean and sordid^ and whose honour is a
more precious possession than their parks and
palaces ; the question is, whether an order of
men thus set apart in a state, men refined, se-
rene, and courteous, learned, brave, travelled,
charitable, and magnificent; do not afibrd the
choicest elements of a senate, especially when
they are distinguished from their fellow-citizens
by no civjl privileges, and the supreme power in
the State has the capacity of adding to their num-
bers at his will, any individuals, however hum-
ble and plebeian their origin, whose wisdom
will in his opinion swell the aggregate capacity
of their assembly ?

Political institutions must be judged by their
results. For nearly five centuries the hereditary
Peerage, as at present constituted, has formed
an active and powerful branch of our legisla-
ture. Five centuries of progressive welfare are
good evidence of the efficient polity of the ad-
vancing country. No statesman can doubt that
the peculiar character of the hereditary branch
of our legislature has mainly contributed to the

^ - - . -- : --

154

stability of our institutions^ and to the order and
prosperous security which that stability has
produced. Nor can we forget that the heredi-
tary principle has at all times secured a senate
for this country inferior in intelligence to no
political assembly on record^/ If we survey the
illustrious history of our Parliament since 1688,
whether we consider its career in reference to
the patriotic energy that has at all times dis-
tinguished its councils, its unceasing vigilance,
its indefatigable industry, its vast and various
knowledge, its courageous firmness, its compre-
hensive sympathy with all classes of the com-
munity, its prescient and imperial ambition, or
the luminous and accomplished eloquence in
which its counsels and resolves have been re-
commended and expressed ; assuredly the here-
ditary branch of our legislature need not shrink
from a comparison with its elective rival. I do
not think, my Lord, that any one will be bold
enough to assert, or if bold enough to assert,
skilful enough to maintain, that the late Reform,
which was to open the doors of the House of
Commons to all the unearthed genius of the

155

country, has indicated as yet any tendency to
render this rivalry on the part of the Peers of
England a matter of greater venture. If» in old
times, the hereditary Senate has at least equalled
in capacity the elective chamber, no impartial
observer at the present day can for a moment
hesitate in declaring, that not only in the higher
accomplishments of statesmen, in elevation of
thought and feeling, in learning and in elo-
quence, does the hereditary assembly excel the
elective ; but, in truth, that for those very qua-
lities, for the possession of which at first sight
we should be most disposed to give a House of
Commons credit, that mastery of detail and ma-
nagement of complicated common^places, which
we style in this country ^^business-like habits,'* the
Peers of England are absolutely more distin-
guished than the huinbler representatives of the
third estate.

But the truth is, my Lord, that the practical
good sense of this country has long ago disposed
of the question of the principle of hereditary
legislation, even if its defence merely de-
pended on its abstract propriety. For, if we

156

examine the elements of the House of Commons
with a little attention, we shall soon discover
that hereditary legislators are not confined to the
House of Lords, and that the inclination of
the represented to make representation heredi-
tary, is very obvious and very natural. The re-
presentative of a county is selected from one of
the first families in the shire, and ten years after,
the son of this member, a candidate for the
same honour, adduces the very circumstance of.
his succession to his father as an increased claim
upon the confidence of the constituency.
Those who are versed in elections know that
there is no plea so common and so popular.
Such elections prove, that far from holding the
principle of heredijiary legislation absurd, public
opinion has decided that the duties of an En-
glish legislator are such, as, on an average of
human capacity, may descend from sire to son ;
and that while there is nothing to shock their
reason in the circumstance, there is much at the
same time to gratify the feelings and please the
associations of an ancient people, who have made
inheritance the pervading principle of their

157

social polity, who are proud of their old families,
and fond of their old laws.

The hereditary character of our Peerage must
be considered in relation to the other qualities
of that illustrious body. No one competent to
form an opinion upon public affairs can doubt for
an instant that whether the nominal honours
of those insignificant personages, who at this pre-
sent hour meet in the senatorial chamber of the
Luxembourg, devolve upon their posterity or
not, the circumstance one way or the other, can
neither increase nor diminish their public and
political authority. The Peers of France are
nonentities, and nonentities they have ever been,
as insignificant before the junior P'rench Revo-
lution, as they are after that bloody riot. If the
hereditary principle could not render the French
Peerage more powerful, it is equally true that
the intellectual qualifications of its members,
however eminent, were equally unproductive of
that result. The Chamber of Peers in France
since the Restoration has numbered amongst its
members the most illustrious warriors, and the
most celebrated diplomatists of the kingdom, the

158

ablest writers of the day, the most distinguished
scientific men, marshals, ambassadors, editors of
newspapers, wits, travellers, authors, mathema-
ticians, chemists : had it been selected by a
Westminster Reviewer himself, the Senate of
France could not have consisted of men more
qualified to develope and demonstrate all *^ the
science of legislation." Why then are th^y so
insignificant ? Formed of all the talent of the
country, the Chamber has no authority. What
can be the cause ? ' The hereditary principle, to
be sure ; the fatal, the absurd, the anomalous
hereditary principle. The hereditary principle
is destroyed I Yes, a revolution is got up to
acbiere, among other great objects, the destruc-
tion of the £atal, absurd, and anom^ous principle
of hereditary legislation in the French Charter ;
and the French House of Peers in consequence
becomes, if possible, more odious and more con.
temptible.

It is not then necessarily the hereditary prin-
ciple which renders the influence of our House
of Lords so injurious to the commonweal ; and
it is not then a collection of all the clever men

159

of a country, under the august title of a Senate,
which necessarily must be productive of good
government. The truth is, a nation will not
allow three hundred men, however ingenious,
to make laws for them, because the sovereign
power of the state chooses to appoint that such
a number of its subjects shall possess this pri-
vilege, and meet in a room to register their de-
crees* The King of England may make Peers,
but he cannot make a House of Lords. The order
of men, of whom such an assembly is formed, is
the creation of ages. In the first place, they
must really be an estate of the realm, a class of
individuals who from their property and personal
influence alone, form an important section of the
whole nation. The laws and customs of England
have compensated its Peers for the loss of their
feodal splendour. A strong current of property
and influence from the wide ocean of national
prosperity perpetuidly flows into our House of
Lords. They still form the most eminent class
in the State ; and, instead of the position of the
Peers, at the present day, bearing a diminished
importance, compared with the attitude of the

160

remaining classes of the community, as the su-
perficial vulgarly imagine, I shall be surprised
that, if the subject be mqre profoundly inquired
into, if the power and privileges with which the
Constitution has invested him be duly consi-
dered, and the indirect support which he re-
ceives from his alliances with the great Com«
mons, and the aristocratic classes which have
sprung up around him, be not omitted in the
estimate, the influence of a great Peer of the
present day, a Duke of Buccleugh, or a Duke
of Devonshire, be ascertained to be much in-
ferior to that of an Earl of Pembroke in the time
of John, or an Earl of Leicester in the reign of
his successor. A House of Lords must consist
of men whose influence is not felt merely in
their chamber of Parliament. They must be an
order of individuals, whose personal importance
crosses us in all the transactions of life, and per-
vades the remotest nook and corner of the
country, an importance also which we find to
arise as much from the hallowed associations, or
even the inveterate prejudices of society, as
from 41m- mere public privileges and constitu*

161

tional and territorial importance. Tbeir names,
office, and character, and the ennobling achieve-
ments of their order, ,must be blended with our
history, and bound up with our hereditary sen-
timent. They must be felt and recognised as
the not unworthy descendants or successors of
a class that has always taken the lead in civilisa-
tion, and formed the advanced guard in the
march of national progress. Vast property, and
the complicated duties which great possessions
entail upon their owners, the inspiring traditions
of a heroic history, the legendary respect of
ages, the fair maintenance in the order itself of
that civility of manners, that love of liberal pur-
suits and that public spirit which become the leaders^
of a free people, and a strong conviction in the
nation generally that under the constitution of
which this order forms a branch, they have
flourished for a longer period, and in a greater
degree, than any existing commonwealth, — such
are some of the elements of which a Senate must
be formed, that attempts to cope with the House
of Lords of England.

The English nation has thought that there is

M

162

a greater certainty of securing a Senate of this
high character, by entailing its functions on the
most important order of its members, than by
trusting to the periodical selection of any body
of individuals whatsoever. It has supposed that
the chance production of its carefully cultivated
aristocracy may offer, on the whole, senatorial
elements preferable to the selected materials of
popular choice. It has desired that there should
be one portion of its legislature free from the
turbulent and overwhelming passions that occa-
sionally assail the less guarded structure of its
more popular assembly ; and to secure all these
great purposes, to contrive at the same time, in
establishing this chamber, its power and its per-
petuity, its independence and its ability, it has
not comprehended how a more practical system
could be adopted than to establish the hereditary
legislation of a democratic Peerage.

This, my Lord, is, I think, one of those cases
in which " the wisdom of our ancestors*' has
been conspicuous, and the harmony which
throughout our history has on the whole so re-
markablv subsisted between our two Houses of

168

Parliament, and the effective manner in whieh
the machinery of our legislature has conse*
quently operated, prove the sound judgment of
the national mind, that has required and sanc-
tioned a Senate thus constituted. So profound,
indeed is, and ever must be, the reciprocal sym-
pathy between the Peers and Commons of Eng-
land, that even after the late factious reconstruc-
tion of the third estate, a majority of the repre-
sentatives of the English Commons upheld the
independence of our august Senate. I ascribe
this sympathy to a cause I have before indicated,
to the principle which is the basis of our social
fabric, our civil equality. It is this great prin-
ciple which has prevented the nobility of Eng-
land from degenerating into a favoured and
odious sect ; it is this great principle which has
placed the Peers at the head of the People, which
has surrounded them with a popular aristocracy,
and filled the chamber of the third estate with
representatives connected with our senators, not
only by sympathy of feeling and similarity of
pursuits, but by the most intimate relations of
birth and blood.

M 2

164

Again, my Lord, the question of our heredi-
tary Peerage must be viewed in reference to the
state and system of parties in this country. It
results from the system of parties in this country,
that both Houses of Parliament are led and
directed by a very few members, and those the
most eminent for talents, and character, and sta«
tion, in the respective assemblies. Thus the ex-
treme cases, which the anti-constitutional writers
are ever urging of the legislative function de- .
volving through the medium of an hereditary in-
stitution to individuals incompetent to discharge
this high office, never, in fact, practically occur.
By ranging himself under one of the political
banners of the State, every legislator avails him-
self of the intelligence of his leaders ; to guide
his judgment and form his opinion, he has the
advantage of the finest talents in the country.
Thus an individual, abstractedly very incom-
petent may become practically very useful, and
thus even a weak brain may assist in passing a
wise law.

Thus have we seen, my Lord, that viewed in
reference to the complete scheme of our legis-

165

lature, the hereditary principle of the House of
Lords, far from being " anomalous/' is in per-
fect harmony with the constitution of the other
estate of the realm ; that if it were as " anonia*-
lous^ as it is regular and consistent, far from
being " absurd," the application of the prin-
ciple is extremely rational ; and that^ inasmuch
as it is not either constitutionally " anomalous,"
or abstractedly *^ absurd," its practical results
have been such as might have been anticipated
from an institution suited to the genius of the
country, in harmony with all its political esta-
blishments, and founded not only on an intimate
acquaintance with the national character, but a
profound knowledge of human nature in ge«-
neraL

In these observations on the character and
history of our two Houses of Parliament, I have
already incidentally traced, or referred to, the
character and history of the monarchy. We
have seen the Kings of England, in the reigns
of the Plantagenets, exercising a sovereign
power, limited however in its use, by the pri-
vileged estates of the kingdom, who, although

166

they held the right of legislation in its fullest
extent, from the imperfect civilisation of the
times, assumed, on the whole, rather the office
of powerful councillors of the Sovereign, than
that of the administrators of the kingdom. We
have seen the same King, in the reigns of the
Tudors, an arbitrary monarch. We have wit-
nessed the same King, in the reigns of the
Stuarts, engaged in a continual struggle with the
reviving, and at length preponderating, power
of the long dormant and paralysed estates. From
the accession of the Prince of Orange, the cha-
racter of our history changes. The old contest
between prerogative and privilege, between the
power of the Crown and the liberty of the sub-
ject ceases for ever, and the war of parties suc-
ceeds to the struggles of Kings and Parlia-
ments.

The English constitution under William the
Third, did not secure greater power and privi-
leges to our Parliament than it possessed under
the reign of Henry the Fourth ; but the Lords
and great Commons of England had since that
time become the most civilized and highly cul-

167

tured body in Europe ; men exceeding the supe-
rior classes of all nations in learning, elo*
quence, and public spirit, in practical skill, and
theoretic wisdom. It is not difficult to compre-
hend that such a body of men in absolute and
unquestioned possession of the legislature, should
no longer be content that the executive and admi*
nistrative province of the constitution, with all its
pomp and circumstance, should be monopolised
by a single individual and his personal retainers.
Here, then, commences the age when the influ-
ence of the Court rapidly declined, when minis*
ters were virtually appointed by the Parliament
instead of the Sovereign, and when, by the insti-
tution of the Cabinet, the scheme and policy of
the administration devolved upon a parliamen-
tary committee, and the King was, in fact, ex
eluded from his own council.

If it be perhaps too strong an expression to
say that William the Third was called to the
throne by the voice of the whole nation, it is
certain that the whole nation ratified the abdica-
tion of James the Second. Whig and Tory,
Churchman and Dissenter, had alike required,

168

and alike assisted in, his expulsion. When the
excitement of this great event had a little sub-
sided, when the rights and liberties of the nation
had been secured by its Parliament, the leaders
of the Whigs, including many of the most power-
ful and ancient families of the kingdom, com-
menced a favourite scheme of that party, which
was to reduce the King of England to the situa-
tion of a Venetian Doge. But William the
Third, like Louis Philippe, was resolved to be his
own minister, and it is not very easy to compre-
hend how in a perilous and revolutionary period,
a sovereign of great capacity will consent to be
deprived of the benefit of his own sagacity. The
Whigs, therefore, were obliged to postpone until
a more favourable opportunity, the series of mea-
sures by which their great result was to be ob-
tained; and for the present indicated their spleen,
by opposing the Sovereign, to whom certainly
that party had originally attracted the attention of
the English nation. But William, whose admi-
nistrative talents were of a high order, succeeded,
by his adroit balance of parties, in keeping the
Whigs in check ; and throughout his reign in
maintaining his authority.

169

The reign of Anne, which proved that the
reign of a Stuart might at the same time be glo-
rious, Protestant, and prosperous, completely
unsettled the public mind of England, and
made nine-tenths of the people yearn after
the lost dynasty of their native sovereigns. The
leaders of both parties were in secret communis
cation with St Germains, and one circumstance
alone prevented the son of James the Second
from regaining the throne of his ancestors — his
absolute incompetence. The Pretender was an
incapable bigot, totally devoid of that talent,
which in some degree had always characterized
his family.

The Hanoverian accession was secured by
the bold conduct of the Dukes of Somerset and
Argyle. These great Whig Peers had the har-
dihood to attend a privy council^ without being
summoned, while the Queen was lying in a state
almost of lethargy, and absolutely forced her
Majesty to appoint the Duke of Shrewsbury
Lord f reasurer. This is one of the most dra-
matic scenes in our political history : the unex-
pected arrival of the two Dukes, the Queen's

170

desperate state, Bolingbroke's baffled hopes, tlie
troops summoned to London, the heralds kept
in waiting with a company of guards to pro-
claim the new King the moment the throne was
vacant. The Elector of Hanover ascended the
throne of England by the sufferance, rather than
the consent, of the nation. Unsupported by the
mass of the people, ignorant of our language,
phlegmatic in temperament, George the First
entirely depended upon the Whig Peers, •and the
Whig Peers resolved to compensate themselves
for the disappointment they had experienced un-
der William the Third. They at once esta-
blished the Cabinet on its present basis. It is
curious to trace the kingly office from the era of
the Plantagenets, when the characters of a royal
council and a legislative chamber were so
blended together in the House of Lords, that the
monarch always presided over his Parliament,
to the moment when the Sovereign under the
Brunswicks was virtually excluded from his own
council. Having thus by the establishment of
the Cabinet obtained in a great degree the ex-
ecutive power of the State, the Whig Peers

in

ventured to propose a measure in order to con-
solidate and confirm their strength, which is
perhaps unequalled by any of the machinations
of a party so remarkable in all periods of our
history for the unscrupulous means with which
they satisfy their lust of power. This measure
was the famous Peerage Bill, proposed and sup*
ported in the House of Lords by those very
Dukes of Somerset and Argyle, who had forced
a Queen to appoint a prime minister on her
death-bed. This Bill, if passed into a law,
would have deprived the King of his preroga-
tive of making further Peers, and would have
occasioned a virtual revolution in our govern-
ment, which from that moment would have be-
come oligarchical. George the First assented
to the Bill, and the House of Lords passed it ;
but the Tory country gentlemen in the House of
Commons, aided on this occasion by some un-
usual allies, succeeded in rejecting the measure.
The Peerage Bill, my Lord, made as much noise
in its day, as the Reform Bill in our own.
There was as great a " crisis," as vehement a
** collision '* in 1718, as any we have lately

172

witnessed stalking about in their. lions' skins;
and the press teemed then with more pamphlets
about ** the Lords" than even at this hour, when
every briefless barrister smells out that the
surest road to a commissionership or other base
job, is to denounce that House of Parliament
which will not truckle to a rapacious and un^
principled faction. The Whigs in 1718 sought
to govern the country by ^* swamping" the House
of Commons : in 1835 it is the House of Lords
that is to be *^ swamped." In I7I8 the coup
d*6tat was to prevent any further increase of the
Lords; in 1835 the Lords are to be out-
numbered. Diflferent tactics to obtain the same
purpose ; and the variance to be accounted for
by the simple circumstance that the party which
has recourse to these desperate expedients, is not
a national party influenced by any great and
avowed principles of public policy and conduct,
but a small knot of great families, who have no
other object but their own aggrandisement, and
who seek to gratify it by all possible means.
// / Although the House of Commons, supported

by a roused and indignant nation, rejected.^the

173

Peerage Bill, still the power of the Whig aris*
tocracy, increased by the Septennial Act, was so
considerable that they monopolised the adminis-
tration of this realm for upwards of half a cen-
tury. George the Second, indeed, struggled for
a time against these Venetian magnificoes, but
when he found himself forced to resign his fa-
vourite minister, the brilliant Carteret, to the
demands of the Pelhams and their well-organized
connexions, the King gave up the effort in
despair. It was the clear sense and the strong
spirit of his able grandson that emancipated this
country from the government of " the great fa-
milies/' The King put himself at the head of
the nation ; and, encouraged by the example of a
popular monarch in George the Third, and a
democratic minister in Mr. Pitt, the nation ele-
vated to power the Tory, or national party of
England, under whose comprehensive and con-
sistent, vigorous and strictly democratic system,
this island has become the metropolis of a mighty
empire, its Sovereign at the same time the most
powerful and its people the most free, and second

1^

174

to no existing nation in arts or arms, in internal
prosperity, or exterior splendour. /
/There is no political subject^ my Lord, on
which a greater confusion of ideas exists, and
none on which it is more desirable that we should
possess very accurate conceptions, than respect-
ing the nature and character of the two great
political parties in which England, for the last
century and a half, has been divided — the Whigs
and the Tories. The people of England in the
reign of George the First formed a community
as distinguished for their public spirit as any
people with which we are acquainted. How
happened it then that nine-tenths of the nation
were the avowed admirers of arbitrary power,
of the divine right of kings, of the doctrine of
non-resistance, and of the duties of passive obe-
dience ? How came it that the upholders of this
servile creed, instead of imbibing it from the
Court, maintained it in defiance of the Court ?
How happened it that the supporters of the Court
themselves were the avowed admirers of the
most popular opinions, of the sovereignty of the

175

people, of the right and duty of resistance, of
toleration, and of the cause of civil and religious
liberty? How came it that the upholders of
these popular opinions, instead of adopting them
to flatter the bulk of the people, maintained them
in defiance of the people? And, lastly^ how
came it that while the professors of arbitrary
opinions exhibited on every great occasion an un-
questioned and undisguised love of freedom and
their rights, and expelled from the throne the
sovereign who menaced them, the professors of
popular opinions, on the other hand, seized every
opportunity of curtailing popular power and
abridging popular privileges, introduced a Peer-
age Bill in the House of Lords, carried a Sep-
tennial Act in the House of Commons, and
finally organized a system of political corruption
throughout the Parliament and the country, from
the taint of which, it is not too much to assert,
the national character has never absolutely re-
covered ?/
/

The consequences of the Great Rebellion,
parliamentary tyranny, and sectarian fanaticism,
had occasioned in due season a strong re-action

176

throughout the country in favour of the Crown
and the Church. Gradually there developed
themselves two sections of the nation respectively
hostile to one of these institutions — sections con-
nected together by no other similarity of feeling
or situation, yet finally co-operating for the pur-
pose of reciprocal assistance in an united attack
upon the Monarchy and the Establishment :
these were a powerful party of the Lords and
the Non-conformists. A republican feeling
united the haughtiest of the Peers with the
lowest of the Puritans ; but the republican model
of the house of Russell was Venice ; of their
plebeian allies, Geneva. The Peers, to reduce
the power of the Crown, now supported by the
great majority of the nation, called in the aid of
the Puritans, and to obtain the aid of the Puri-
tans attacked the Church : the Puritans, to in-
sure the destruction of the religious establish-
ment, allied themselves with the Peers in their
assault upon the King, whose office, apart from
the eccleciastical polity, they were inclined to
respect, and even to reverence. The Puritans
beaded by the Peers formed a small minority of

177

the nation, but at the same time a party formida*
ble from their leaders and their organization, for
the Non-conformists abounded in the metropolis,
and were chiefly resident in towns. Their cry
was, Civil and Religious Freedom — that is, a doge
and no bishops: advocating the liberty of the
subject, the Peers would have established an oIi«
garchy ; upholding toleration, the Puritans aimed
at supremacy. This is the origin of the Whig
party in our country.

The mass of the nation still smarting under
the sequestrations and imprisonments of parlia-
mentary committees, and loathing the recollec-
tion of the fanaticism and the hypocrisy of the
Roundhead apostles of the tub, clung to the na-
tional institutions. The clergy, jealous of the
Non-conformists, and fearful of another depriva-
tion, exaggerated the power and character of the
Crown, in which they recognised their only safe-
guard. Hence divine right and passive obe-
dience resounded from our Protestant pul-
pits, echoed with enthusiasm by a free and
spirited people who acknowledged in these
phrases only a determination to maintain the

N

178

mild authority of their King and of their Church.
This is the origin of the Tory party in our
country.

On the one hand civil and religious liberty;
on the other, divine right and passive obedience ;
both mere phrases, both the sheer cries of a
party, both the mystifying pretexts that concealed
a pregnant cause. The avowed upholders of
divine right and passive obedience, headed by
the national clergy that promulgated these doc-
trines, were the first to expel the sovereign who
aimed at their rights and liberties ; the avowed
advocates of civil and religious freedom, when
they finally obtained power, hazarded a blow at
the only foundation of freedom, the equality of
civil rights, ** swamped*' the House of Commoni^
by the Septennial Act, and nearly concentrated
the whole powers of the State in the House of
Lordsi by the Peerage Bill.

It was the intention of the Whigs to have
raised the Prince of Orange to the throne by the
aid of a cabal. By this means the Sovereign
would have been in their power, and they could
have realized the object at which they had been

179

long aiming. The insurrection of the Tories or
the national party against James frustrated this
project : the movement became national, and
the settlement, instead of being factious, was
patriotic. The powerful capacity of William III.
was not content with the limited authority
destined for him : he encouraged the Tories, he
balanced parties, and he maintained his throne
with all the artifices of a practised politician.
The reign of Anne, a Stuart, yet strictly Pro-*
testant and eminently prosperous, broke up in a
great degree the strong lines of political demarca-
tion, and occasioned the blending of parties. In
spite of the Act of Settlement^ the whole nation
was prepared for the restoration of the ancient line j
Whigs and Tories alike corresponded with St.
Germains, and served together in the same ad-
ministration at home. So weak was the tie of
party in this reign, that it was not then consi-
dered a point of political honour to resign your
post on a change of administration which substi-
tuted a prime minister of different opinions to
your own, and to those through whose influence
you had yourself acceded to office.

N 2

180

V / The Whigs secured the Hanoverian succession

by a coup (Titat. But when the nation had re-
covered from its surprise, the rage of parties
increased to a degree unprecedented in our his-
tory, and that formal and organized division of
public men occurred which has ever since been
observed in the world of politics. The dislike
of the Tories to the new dynasty was, if possible,
aggravated by the conviction of the impolicy of
recalling the old. The truly Protestant spirit of
England forbade such a recourse. The House
of Brunswick was supported by the great Whig
families, the Non-conformists, and what was then
for the first time called " the money interest,''
the fungus spawn of public loans, who began to
elbow the country-gentlemen, and beat them out
of the representation of their boroughs by the
long purses of a Plutocracy. The rest of the
nation, that is to say, nine-tenths of the
people of England, formed the Tory party, the
landed proprietors and peasantry of the kingdom,
headed by a spirited and popular Church, and
looking to the kingly power in the abstract,
though not to the reigning king, as their only pro-

i

181

tection from an impending oligarchy. The
f Whig party has ever been odious to the English /
people, and in spite of all their devices and com-
binations it may ever be observed, that in the
long run, the English nation declares against
them. Even now, after their recent and most
comprehensive coup (TStat, they are oiily main-
tained in power by the votes of the Irish and
the Scotch members. The reason of this is, that
the Whigs are an anti-national party. In order
to accomplish their object of establishing an oli-
garchical republic, and of concentrating the go-
vernment of the state in the hands of a few great
families, the Whigs are compelled to declare war
against all those great national institutions, the
power and influence of which, present obstacles
to the fulfilment of their purpose. It is these
institutions which make us a nation. Without
our Crown, our Church, our Universities, our
great municipal and commercial Corporations,
our Magistracy, and its dependent scheme of pro-
vincial polity, the inhabitants of England, in-
stead of being a nation, would present only a
mass of individuals governed by a metropolis.

182

whence an arbitrary senate would issue the stern
decrees of its harsh and heartless despotism. A
class of the subjects, indeed, might still possess
the fruitless privilege of electing its representa-
tives in Parliament, but without any machinery
to foster public spirit and maintain popular
power, the whole land a prey to the most de^.
grading equality^ the equality that levels, not
the equality that elevates, we should soon see
these mock representatives the mere nominees of
a Prsefect, and the very first to tamper with our
privileges and barter away our freedom. In
such a state of society, a state of society which
France has accomplished, and to which the
Whigs are hurrying us, no public avenues to
wealth and honour would subsist save through
the government. To that government all the
ambition and aspirations, all the talent and the
energy of the subject would be devoted; and
from the harsh seat of the provincial governor, to
the vile office of the provincial spy, every place
would be filled by the ablest and most unprin-
cipled of a corrupted people.
( The Tory party in this country is the nar

r

183

/ tion^l party } it is the. really democratic party (
of England. It supports the institutions of the
country, because they have been established for
the common good, and because they secure the
equality of civil rights, without which, whatever
may be its name, no government can be free,
and based upon which principle, every govern*
ment, however it may be styled, is, in fact, a De-
mocracy. The Whig leaders at the commence-
ment of the last century, men of consummate
ability and great experience in affairs, were
not blind to the advantage which might be
obtained by enlarging on the apparent un-
popular character of Tory tenets.. In the
reign of George the First, both parties in
their eagerness had recourse to their old cries^
without reflecting that the circumstances
of their respective positions had considerably
changed; that the advocates of enlarged and
comprehensive freedom were now attempting to
establish an oligarchy on the ruins of the na-
tional institutions, and that the votaries of divine
right and passive obedience were prepared to
rebel against the Sovereign whose authority,

184

by the original Act of Settlement, they them-
selves had mainly contributed to establish.
However inconsistent might be the practice and
the professions of the respective parties, it was ob-
vious that, in the mutual misrepresentations, the
Whigs had the advantage* An oligarchy sought
to establish itself by the plea of public freedom ;
a nation struggled to maintain its rights on the
principles of arbitrary power. This was, in-
deed, a false position ; yet so clear-sighted was
the people of England,, and so apt to distinguish
their cause from their pretext, that its inconve*
nience was for a long time unfelt, and in the
preceding reign the nation had sympathized
with the triumph of Sacheverell, and ridiculed
the false pretensions of the Whigs to the advo-
cacy and trusteeship of the popular cause./

When, however, the Tory party, that is,
the English nation, had renounced all hope or
wish for the restoration of their native sove-
reigns ; when, in their Protestant feeling, they
had taught themselves to look upon the establish-
ment of the Hanoverian succession as indispen-
sable to the maintenance of their liberties, and

185

had thus authorized and ratified, without redresd
or appeal, the very political opinions which they
had hitherto opposed, the inconvenience became
more apparent. /There are periods when the ^ /
titles and watchwords of political parties become
obsolete ; and when, by adhering to an ancient
and accustomed cry, a party often appears to /
profess opinions less popular than it really prac^ '
tises, and yields a proportionate advantage to its
more dexterous competitor. In times of great
political change, and rapid political transition, it
will generally be observed that political parties
find it convenient to re-baptize themselves.
Thus, in the present day, Whigs have become ^
Reformers, and Tories Conservatives. In the
early part of the last century, the Tory party
required a similar re-organization to that which
it has lately undergone ; and as it is in the
nature of human affairs that the individual that
is required shall not long be wanting, so in the
season of which I am treating, arose a man
remarkable in an illustrious age, who, with the
splendor of an organizing genius, settled the
confused and discordant materials of English

186

faction, and reduced them into a clear and.^ste-
matic order. This was Lord Bolingbroke.

Gifted with that fierj imagination, the teem-
ing fertility of whose inventive resources is a9
necessary to a great statesman or a great general,
as to a great poet, the ablest writer and the
most accomplished orator of his age, that rare
union that in a country of free parliaments and
a free press, insures to its possessor the privilege
of exercising a constant influence over the mipd
of his country, that rare union that has ren-
dered Burke so memorable ; blending with that
intuitive knowledge of his race which creative
minds alone enjoy, all the wisdom which can be
derived from literature, and a comprehensive
experience of human affairs; — no one was better
qualified to be the minister of a free and
powerful nation than Henry St. John ; and
Destiny at first appeared to combine with
Nature in the elevation of his fortunes. Op-
posed to the Whigs from principle, for an
oligarchy is hostile to genius, and recoiling from
the Tory tenets, which his unprejudiced and
vigorous mind taught him at the same time to

187

dread and to contemn, Lord Bolingbroke, at the
outset of his career, incurred the common-place im-
putation of insincerity and inconsistency, because
in an age of unsettled parties with professions
contradictory of their conduct, he maintained
that vigilant and meditative independence which
is the privilege of an original and determined
spirit. It is probable that in the earlier years
of his career he meditated over the formation of
a new party, that dream of youthful ambition in
a perplexed and discordant age, but destined in
English politics to be nevermore substantial than a
vision. More experienced in political life, he
became aware that he bad only to choose be-
tween the Whigs and the Tories, and his saga-
cious intellect not satisfied, with the superficial
character of these celebrated divisions, pene?
trated their interior and essential qualities, and
discovered, in spite of all the affectation of po-
pular sympathy on one side, and of admiration
of arbitrary power on the other, that this choice
was in fact a choice between oligarchy and de-
mocracy. From the moment that Lord Boling-
broke, in becoming a Tory, embraced the na-

188

tional cause, he devoted hitn8e1f absolutely to his
party : all the energies of his Protean mind were
lavished in their service ; knd although the ig-
noble prudence of the Whig minister restrained
him from advocating the cause of the nation in
the senate, it was his inspiring pen that made
Walpole tremble in the recesses of the Treasury,
and in a series o( writings, unequalled in our
literature for their spirited patriotism, their just
and profound views, and the golden eloquence
in which they are expressed, eradicated from
Toryism all those absurd and odious doctrines
which Toryism had adventitiously adopted, clearly
developed its essential and permanent character,
discarded jure dimno, demolished passive obedi-
ence, threw to the winds the doctrine of non-
resistance, placed the abolition of James and the
accession of George on their right basis, and in
the complete re-organization of the public mind,
laid the foundation for the future accession of
the Tory party to power, and to that popular
and triumphant career which must ever await the
policy of an administration inspired by the spirit
of our free and ancient institutions.

189

Upwards of a century has elapsed since the
Whigs, by a series of coups (TStatf attempted to
transform the English constitution into an oligar-
chy. George the Third routed the Whigs; but
had their India Bill been more fortunate than their
Peerage Bill, all the energy of that spirited
sovereign would have been fruitless. Stung to
the quick by their long and merited exclusion
from power, the Whigs are now playing the same
great game which was partially successful at the
commencement of the last century. They have
again formed a close and open alliance with the
Dissenters, and again declared war against the
national institutions. Instead of ^^ swamping''
the Tory House of Commons by a Septennial
Act, they have moulded it to their use and fancy
by a re-construction, which has secured a pre-
ponderating influence to their sectarian allies :
instead of restricting the royal prerogative in the
creation of Peers, they have counselled its
prodigal exercise ; but before they had only to
confirm their power in the House of Lords, now
they have to create their power. They boast
that they hold the King in duresse^ and probably

190

their boast ib not ill-founded, but let us hope
that our gracious sOTsreign may take warning
from tbe first of his house that ruled these
realms, and follow the example of George the
Third rather than George the First. Tbe House
of Commons remodelled, tbe House of Lords me-
naced, the King unconstitutionally controlled,
the Church is next attacked, then the Corpo-
rations, and they do not conceal that the Ma-
gistracy is to be the next victim : and the nation
is thus mangled and torn to pieces, its most sacred
feelings outraged, its most important interests
destroyed, by a miserable minority arrogating to
themselves the bewildering title of " the People,"
and achieving all this misery and misfortune,
all this havoc and degradation in the sacred
name of liberty, and under the impudent pre-
tence of advancing the great cause of popular
nmolii^rution, Bud sccuriug the common good
leral happiness. My Lord, tbe Whigs in-
tbe people," let us appeal to the nation.
t these friends of " the people " installed
ir. What are their great measures? The
aw Bill and the projected disfranchisement

191

of all the freemen of England. Is this their ser*
vice to the " people ?" Are these their measures
of popular amelioration P Is this their scheme
to secure the happiness and increase the power
of " the people ?** Who does not in an instant

4

detect that " the people " of the Whigs, is that
part of the constituency or commons of England
who yield them the advantage of their suffrages ?
Now, at the last general election, warm as was
the contest, there were not more, I doubt whe-
ther as many, than one hundred and fifty thou^
sand votes polled in favour of the Whigs. And
this, too, after they had remodelled the third
estate with a mere view to the consolidation of
their own interest. So then " the people *' of
the Whigs is about one hundred and fifty thou-
sand persons, and of these too the great majority
sectarians, a class necessarily hostile to our con-
stitution, and long excluded by the nation from
the exercise of political power for that very reason^
It might have been very odious, it might have
been very illiberal, it might have been very un-
wise to exclude the Dissenters from the exercise
of political power; but is it less odious, is it

9(

192

more liberal, is it wiser to carrjr on the govern-
ment of the State by the aid of the Dissenters
alone?

/If the Whigs at this moment be pursuing the
same desperate and determined policy that they
prosecuted so vigorously a century back, it will
be well for their rivals to adopt the same cautious
yet energetic system of conduct which, developed
at the same period by the genius of a Boling-
broke, led in due season to the administration
of a Pitt. In the conduct of the Tory party at
this moment, it appears to me, that there are
three points to the furtherance of which we
should principally apply ourselves : 1st. That
the real character and nature of Toryism should
be generally and clearly comprehended : Sndly.
That Toryism should be divested of all those
qualities which are a dven titious and not essen-
tial, and which having been produced by that
course of circumstances which are constantly
changing, become in time obsolete, inconve-
nient, and by the dexterous misrepresentation
of our opponents even odious : 3rdly. That the
efficient organization of the party should be se-
cured and maintained.

193

The necessity of the third point has already
been anticipated by the party ; but they have
blundered in the second, and totally neglected
the first.

Toryism, or the policy of the Tories, being
the proposed or practised embodification, as the
case may be, of the national will and character,
it follows that Toryism must occasionally repre-
sent and reflect the passions and prejudices of
the nation, as well as its purer energies, and its
more enlarged and philosophic views. In a pe-
rilous age of war and revolution, throughout the
most terrible struggle of modern history, the
destiny of England was regulated by the Tories.
They carried us through the sharp and flaming
ordeal to transcendent triumph and unparal-
leled prosperity. A factious and anti-national
opposition, who predicted our discomfiture in
every engagement, and exaggerated and ex-
tolled on every occasion the power and pre-
eminence of our foe, raised a cry of corruption
against the Tories during this mighty contest,
because in the creation of our colonial empire
immense establishments were necessarily raised,

o

194

the details of which in the desperate heat of
war could not be severely scanned ; raised a
cry of enmity to improvement against the Tories
during this mighty contest, because they opposed
any examination or remodelling of our ancient
institutions and domestic polity, at a time when
all the attention and energies of the nation and
its rulers should be devoted to their foreign
enemy, the most terrible for his power, his re-
sources, his talents, and his activity, which Eng-
land had ever encountered : raised a cry of
narrow-minded bigotry and hostility to civil and
religious liberty against the Tories during this
mighty contest, because at such a moment they
refused to sanction extensive alterations in the
constitution of the country, and declined the re-
sponsibility of entrusting, at a season ill-suited
for experiments, new classes of their fellow-sub-
jects with the exercise of political power. Cor-
ruption, bigotry, hostility to all improvement — -
these were the false cries raised by the Whigs
against the national party during the immortal
struggle between Toryism and Napoleon. Yet
were the Tories advocates of corruption when

195

they introduced a bill into the House of Com-
mons for the banishment of ail placemen from
that assembly, and denounced Walpole ? Were
the Tories hostile to civil and religious liberty
when they crushed the Papacy, opposed a stand-
ing army, cherished free elections, upheld short
Parliaments ? Were the Tories inimical to na-
tional improvement when under Pitt they first
applied philosophy to commerce, and science to
finance ; when under their auspices the most
severe retrenchment was practised in every
department of the public expenditure ; when a
bill for the Commutation of Tithes was not only
planned but printed ; and when nothing but the
violence of the French Revolution prevented
the adoption of a matured scheme of Ecclesias-
tical Reform, which would not have left our re-
volutionary oligarchs a single pretext to veil
their present plundering purpose? Whyl the
cry of Parliamentary Reform was first raised by
a Tory minister, struggling against the bigoted
and corrupt authority of the Whig oligarchy;
and it was not until the united efforts of the so-
vereign, the minister, and the nation, succeeded

o 2

196

in piercing the serried ranks of the anti-national
faction, that the Whigs, alarmed at the Tories
beginning, by their acquisitions, to neutralize the
only ill-effects of the close borough system, bor-
rowed the watchword of their patriotic op-
ponents, became friends of " the People" and
Parliamentary Reformers. Corruption, bigotry,
hostility to improvement, may be but other
names for the just and decent influence of a
vigorous government, a determination to uphold
the religious establishment of the country, and a
resolution to oppose the crude and indigested
schemes of adventurous charlatans. However
this may be, it is sufficient for me to show that
the qualities popularly associated with these
titles, are not peculiar to Toryism, that they form
no essential portion of that national policy, and
that when from the course of circumstances they
have been temporarily adopted by the Tories in
power, it has been in deference to the national
voice, of which Toryism is the echo; for we must
not forget that the war, and all its concomitant
expenditure, was heartily sanctioned by the
English nation, and that that sagacious com-

197

munity di$)countenanced with an almost una-
nimous expression any experimental tampering
with our civil or religious establishments, or the
general scheme of our domestic polity, during
the war of the Revolution.

When that war terminated, the alleged ad-
vocates of " corruption" pursued so vigorous a
system of retrenchment, that when their rivals
entered office, pledged to such marvels of finan-
cial regeneration, they were absolutely baffled
to surpass their misrepresented predecessors ; the
opposers of " national improvement" reformed
our criminal code, revised our currency, remo-
delled our commercial system ; the enemies of
civil and religious freedom relieved the Dissen-
ters, and emancipated the Papists. Far from
being corrupt, far from cherishing abuses, far
from withstanding improvement, and upholding
a system of exclusive bigotry, we know now, and
we know it too well, that Toryism had un-
wisely wefi^ikened the indispensable influence of
government, that it indulged in a dangerous
liberality, in a fallacious conciliation, in fantastic
empiricism, and unnecessary concession.

198

But this was not the fault of the Tory leaders ;
it was the fault of the party — of Tory ism — of the
nation. The triumph of the national party at
the peace of Paris over their anti-English op-
ponentS) was so complete, that they fancied, in
the fulness of their pride, that all future com-
petition was impossible, so the Tories became
merciful and condescendingly lenient. Conci-
liation was the national motto from the Parlia-
ment to the Vestry, and Conciliation conducted
us in due time to a Revolution. The supineness
of the nation forced its Tory leaders to yield
much of which they disapproved. At length
the reconstruction of the third estate was de-
manded, and of such a change, the Tory leaders
would not incur the responsibility. The old
Whig party took advantage of the dissensions
which it had deeply sown and sedulously watched,
and appeared again upon the public stage to
play the old game of a century back, with their
mouths full of the People, Reform, and Liberty,
and their portfolios bursting with oligarchical
coups d^etat

The English nation has now recovered its

199

senses, and Toryism has resumed its old healthy
complexion. The social power of a national
party can never be destroyed, but a state trick
may terribly curtail its political power. So it is
with the Tories. I do not think there ever was
a period in our history when the Eng^lish nation
was so intensely Tory in feeling as at the pre-
sent moment ; but the Reform act has placed
the power of the country in the hands of a
small body of persons hostile to the nation, and
therefore there is no due proportion between the
social and the political power of the national party.
If, in confirmation of the argument which I
have been pursuing, I appeal to the measures
brought forward by Sir Robert Peel and the
Cabinet, m which your Lordship held the Great
Seal of England, as evidence that the Tories are
not opposed to measures of political ameliora-
tion, I shall perhaps be met with that famous
dilemma of insincerity or apostasy which was
urged during the last general election on the
Whig hustings, with an air of irrefutable
triumph, which, had it been better grounded,
had been less amusing. I will grant that Sir

200

Robert Peel and his colleagues had previously
resisted the measures which they then proposed.
But, in the interval, the third estate of the
realm had been reconstructed, and a prepon-
derating influence had been given to a small
class who would not support any ministry un-
prepared to carry such measures. If once the
Tories admitted that it was impossible for them
to propose the adoption of these measures, they
simultaneously admitted that they could never
again exercise power ; they conceded to the
Whigs a monopoly of power, under the specious
title of a monopoly of Reform ; and the oligarchy
against which we had so long struggled would
finally have been established. Was this the duty
of Sir Robert Peel and his colleagues ? If they
had held it to be such, the nation would have
rejected them for its leaders. The nation,
struggling with a sect, menaced by an insolent
minority of its members, recognised the absolute
necessity of such concessions on the part of its
leaders, as would deprive this hostile and privi-
leged minority of every just or plausible ground
of opposition to the national will. The deter-

^201

mination of Sir Robert Peel and his colleagues
to carry these measures has already shaken the
oligarchy to its centre ; it has forced it, only
four years after having reconstructed the third
estate for its purposes, to rely upon the treason-
able support of a foreign priesthood ; and it has
prepared the way for the regeneration of the na-
tional character. This great deed therefore, in-
stead of being an act of insincerity, or apostasy,
was conceived in good faith, and in perfect
harmony with the previous policy of the party :
it was at the same time indispensable, and urged
alike by the national voice and the national in-
terests, and history will record it as the conduct
of patriotic wisdom.

I think, my Lord, that I have now shown
how unjust are those, and how liable to error,
who form their opinion of Toryism from those
accidental qualities which are inseparable from all
political parties that have been long in power,
and have exercised that prolonged authority under
circumstances of extreme difficulty and danger.
And it is curious to observe, that so difficult is it
to destroy the original character and eradicate

202

the first principles of human affairs, that those
very members of the Tory party who were
loudest in upbraiding the Whig Reform Act as
a democratic measure, were simultaneously, and
have ever since been, urging and prosecuting
measures infinitely more democratic than that
cunning oligarchical device. However irresisti-
ble may be the social power of the Tory party,
their political power, since 1831, has only been
preserved and maintained by a series of democratic
measures of the greatest importance and most com
prehensive character. No sooner was the passing
of the Whig Reform Act inevitable, than the Tories
introduced a clause into it which added many
thousand members to the estate of the Commons.
No sooner was the Whig Reform Act passed,
and circumstances had proved that with all their
machinations, the oligarchy was not yet secure,
than the Whigs, under the pretence of reforming
the corporations, attempted to compensate them-
selves for the democratic increase of the third
estate, through the Chandos clause, by the political
destruction of all the freemen of England; but the
Tories again stepped in to the rescue of the nation

203

from the oligarchy, and now preserved the rights
of eighty thousand members of the third estate.
And not content with adding many thousands to
its numbers, and preserving eighty thousand, the
Tories, ever since the passing of the oligarchical
Reform Act of the Whigs, have organized socie-
ties throughout the country for the great demo-
cratic purpose of increasing to the utmost possible
extent the numbers of the third estate of the
realm. The clause of Lord Chandos, your Lord-
ship's triumphant defence of the freemen of Eng-
land, and the last Registration, are three great
democratic movements, and quite in keeping with
the original and genuine character of Toryism.

If we take a superficial view of the nature of
the English constitution, we shall perceive that
the government of the country is carried on by a
king and two limited orders of his subjects : but
if we indulge in a more profound and compre-
hensive survey — if we examine not only the po-
litical constitution, but the political condition of
the country, we shall in truth discover that the
state of our society is that of a complete demo-
cracy, headed by an hereditary chief, the execu-

204

tive and legislative functions performed by two
privileged classes of the community, but the
whole body of the nation entitled, if duly quali-
fied, to participate in the exercise of those func-
tions, and constantly participating in them.-
. . / The basis of English society is Equality. But

here let us distinguish : there are two kinds of
equality ; there is the equality that levels and
destroys, and the equality that elevates and
creates. It is this last, this sublime, this celes-
tial equality, that animates the laws of England.
The principle of the first equality, base, terres-
trial, Gallic, and grovelling, is that no one should
be privileged ; the principle of English equality
is that every one should be privileged. Thus
the meanest subject of our King is born to great
and important privileges ; an Englishman, how-
ever humble may be his birth, whether he be
doomed to the plough or destined to the loom,
is born to the noblest of all inheritances, the
equality of civil rights ; he is born to freedom,
he is born to justice, and he is born to property.
There is no station to which he may not aspire ;
there is no master whom he is obliged to serve j

205 -^r

there is no magistrate who dares imprison him ^
against the law ; and the soil on which he
labours must supply him with an honest and de-
corous maintenance. These are rights and pri-
vileges as valuable as King, Lords, and Com-
mons ; and it is only a nation thus schooled and
cradled in the principles and practice of freedom,
which, indeed, could maintain such institutions.
Thus the English in politics are as the old He-
brews in religion, ** a favoured and peculiar
people/* As Equality is the basis, so Gradation
is the superstructure ; and the English nation is
essentially a nation of classes, but not of castes.
Hence that admirable order, which is the cha-
racteristic of our society ; for in England every
man knows or finds his place \ the law has
supplied every man with a position, and nature
has a liberal charter to amend the arrange-
ment of the law. Our equality is the safety
valve of tumultuous spirits ; our gradation
the security of the humble and the meek.
The latter take refuge in their order; the
former seek relief in emancipating themselves
from its rank. English equality calls upon the

^206

subject to aspire ; French equality summons him
to abase himself. In England the subject is in-
vited to become an object of admiration or re-
spect ; in France he is warned lest he become an
object of envy or of ridicule. The law of Eng-
land has invested the subject with equality in
order that if entitled to eminence, he should rise
superior to the mass. The law of France has in-
vested the subject with equality, on condition
that he prevent the elevation of his fellow.
English equality blends every man's ambition
with the perpetuity of the state ; French equa-
lity, which has reduced the subject into a mere
individual, has degraded the state into a mere
society. English equality governs the subject
by the united and mingled influences of reason
and imagination ; French equality having re-
jected imagination and aspiring to reason, has
in reality, only resolved itself into a barren fan-
tasy. The constitution of England is founded
not only on a profound knowledge of human
nature, but of human nature in England ; the
political scheme of France originates not only in
a profound ignorance of human nature in ge-

207

neral, but of French human nature in particular *
thus in England, however vast and violent may
be our revolutions, the Constitution ever becomes
more firm and vigorous, while in France a riot
oversets the government, and after half a cen-
tury of political experiments, one of the most in-
tellectual of human races has succeeded in losing
every attribute of a nation, and has sought re-
fuge from anarchy in a despotism without lustre,
which contradicts all its theories, and violates
all the principles for which it has ever affected
to struggle. /
y The English nation, to obtain the convenience 2 ^
of monarchy, have established a popular throne,
and to enjoy the security of aristocracy, have
invested certain orders of their fellow subjects
with legislative functions: but these estates,
however highly privileged, are invested with no
quality of exclusion; and the Peers and the
Commons of England are the trustees of the
nation, not its masters. The country where the
legislative and even the executive office may be
constitutionally obtained by every subject of the
land, is a democracy, and a democracy of the

208

noblest character^ If neither ancient ages, nor
the more recent experience of our newer time,
can supply us with a parallel instance of a free go-
vernment, founded on the broadest basis of popu-
lar rights, yet combining with democratic liberty,
aristocratic security, and monarchical conveni-
ence ; if the refined spirit of Greece, if the
great Roman soul, if the brilliant genius
of feodal Italy, alike failed in realizing this
great result, let us cling with increased devotion
to the matchless creation of our ancestors, and
honour with still deeper feelings of gratitude
and veneration, the English Constitution.
That Constitution, my Lord, established civil
equality in a rude age, and anticipated by cen-
turies, in its beneficent practice, the sublime
theories of modern philosophy : having made us
equal, it has kept us free. If it have united
equality with freedom, so also has it connected
freedom with glory. It has established an em-
pire which combines the durability of Rome with
the adventure of Carthage. It has, at the same
time, secured us the most skilful agriculture,
the most extended commerce, the most inge-

209

nious maaufactures, victorious armies, and in-
vincible fleets. Nor has the intellectual might
of England, under its fostering auspices, been
less distinguished than its imperial spirit, its
manly heart, or its national energy. The au-
thors of England have formed the mind of Eu-
rope, and stamped the breathing impression of
their genius on the vigorous character of a new-
world. Under that Constitution the adminis-
tration of justice has become so pure, that its ex-
ercise has realized the dreams of some Utopian
romance. That Constitution has struggled suc-
cessfully with the Papacy, and finally, and for
the first time, proved the compatibility of secta-
rian toleration and national orthodoxy. It has
made private ambition conducive to public wel-
fare, it has bafiled the machinations of factions
and of parties, and when those more violent
convulsions have arisen, from whose periodic
visitations no human institutions can be exempt,
the English Constitution has survived the moral
earthquake, and outlived the mental hurricane,
and been sedulous that the natural course of our
prosperity should only be disturbed, and not de-

210

stroyed. Finally, it has secured for every man the
career to which he is adapted, and the reward
to which he is entitled ; it has summoned your
Lordship to preside over Courts and Parlia-
ments, to maintain law by learning, and to re-
commend wisdom by eloquence : and it has se-
cured to me, in common with every subject of
this realm, a right, the enjoyment of which I
would not exchange even for —

" The ermined stole,
The starry breast, and coroneted brow " —

the right of expressing my free thoughts to a
free people.

THE END.

LONDON :
IBOrSOS' AND PALMER, PRINTERS, SAVOY STREET, STRAND,

>